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Epochs of Modern History 

EDITED BY 
EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A., J. SURTEES PHILLPOTTS, B.C.L. 

AND 

C. COLBECK, M.A. 



THE BEGINNING of the MIDDLE AGES 



DEAN CHURCH. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 

Edited by Rev. G. W. Cox and Charles Sankey, M. A. 
Eleven volumes, i6mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. Price per 
vol., $1.00. The set, Roxburgh style, gilt lop, in box, $11.00. 

Troy— Its Legend, History, and Literature. By S. G. W. 

Benjamin. 
The Greeks and the Persians. By G. W. Cox. 
The Athenian Empire. By G. W. Cox. 
The Spartan and Theban Supremacies.^ By Charles Sankey. 
The Macedonian Empire. By A. M. Curteis. 
Early Rome. By W. Ihne. 
Rome and Carthage. By R. Bosworth Smith. 
The Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla. By A. H. Beesley. 
The Roman Triumvirates. By Charles Merivale. 
The Early Empire. By \V. Wolfe Capes. 
The Age of the Antonines. By \V. Wolfe Capes. 

EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 

Edited by Edward E. Morris. Eighteen volumes, i6mo, 
with 77 Maps, Plans, and Tables. Price per vol., $1.00. 
The set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $18.00. 

Whe Beginning of the Middle Ages. By R. W. Church. 
^The Normans in Europe. By A. H. Johnson. 
^The Crusades. By G. VV. Cox. 
^The Early Plantagenets. By Wm. Stubbs. 
"■Edward IN. By W. Warburton. 

•The Houses of Lancaster and York. By James Gairdner. 
^The Era of the Protestant Revolution. By Frederic Seebohm, 
^The Early Tudors. By C. E. Moberly. 
'The Age of Elizabeth. By M. Creighton. 
A The Thirty Years War, 1618-1648. By S. R. Gardiner. 
».The Puritan Revolution. By S. R. Gardiner. 
^The Fall OF the Stuarts. By Edward Hale. 
\The English Restoration and Louis XIV.. By Osmond Airy. 
^The Age of Anne. By Edward E. Morris. 
"The Early Hanoverians. Bv Edward E. Morris. 

Frederick the Great. By F. W. Longman. 

The French Revolution and First Empire. By W. O'Connor 

. Morris. Appendix by Andrew D. White. 

The Epoch of Reform, i830-1850. By Justin Macarthy. 



Epochs of Modern History 



THE BEGINNING 

OF 

THE MIDDLE AGES 



BY 

RfW- 'CHURCH 



DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S : HONORARY FELLOW OF ORIEL. 



'WITH THREB MAPS' 



NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

1890. 



WAY 2 7 1904 






Transfer 
1 f£BI9fl5 



PREFACE. 



The present volume must be considered as an intro- 
duction or preface to the series of ' Epochs of Modern 
History/rather than as an integral member of the series. 
The other volumes are narratives, and enter into detail. 
This one is a mere general sketch, necessarily one of 
the barest outline, faint and vague where they are full. 
My aim has been little more than to disengage the 
leading lines in the history of five most important and 
most confused centuries, and to mark the influences 
which most asserted themselves, and which seem to 
have most governed the results as we see them in sub- 
sequent history. In this summary view I have con- 
fined my attention mainly to the West, saying little of 
the great nations of later times in the North and East — • 
Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary, Russia. The reason 
is, that the course of modern history was determined 
in the West, and what happened in the North and 
East took its start and course from what had happened 
and had taken permanent forms in the nations of the 
West and South. 

In compiling this slight sketch, in which notes and re- 
ferences are not allowed, I need not say that I am under 



vi Preface. 

obligations of the most varied kind to others. Every- 
one who writes of these times finds much of his work 
done for him in Gibbon, Merivale, Hallam, Milman, 
Guizot, in the older French Books, such as Fleury's 
great compilation, the "Ecclesiasiical History," and 
in the lively and picturesque narratives of the later 
ones. I have been much assisted by the first two 
volumes of Sir F. Palgrave's prolix but very instruc- 
tive History of England and Normandy. Besides 
these, we have a younger race of English historical 
scholars, who have amply kept up the reputation 
of their predecessors for honesty of research and 
breadth and vigour of thought, and have removed the 
reproach that though English historians were skilful 
architects, they were careless of the quarries from 
which their stones came, and easy in passing slovenly 
and unsound work. The debt is great which all students 
of the early times of Europe owe to Mr. Freeman, Pro- 
fessor Stubbs, and Mr. Bryce, whose remarkable Essay 
on the Roman Empire placed in a clear light an im- 
portant but obscure and ill-understood link of con- 
nection between the ancient and modern world. I 
have tried to remember, as far as I could, that no one 
can really take in and judge of the meaning of events, 
without going from even the best secondary authorities 
to the ultimate, and if possible, contemporary sources 
of our information. In doing this, and in all other 
ways, it would be unpardonable not to say how 
much I have been helped by the laborious and saga- 
cious works of recent German and French scholars. For 



Preface. vii 

everything connected with the early condition and the 
wanderings of the new races, I have referred to Zeuss, 
Dahn, and to Pfahler's Handbook of German An- 
tiquities, for the Germans, and to Schefarik and Jirecek 
for the Slaves. I have found especial assistance in a 
series of works suggested by Leopold Ranke, in 
which the materials of history for the times of Charles 
the Great and his followers are collected, compared, 
and arranged with admirable skill and completeness, 
by writers of great ability, Bonnell, Abell, DUmmler, 
and others— the "Annals of German History," {/ahr- 
biicJier der Deutschen Geschichte). The care, the 
comprehensiveness, the resolute tenacity of research, 
the fearlessness of trouble in investigating, shown 
by the distinguished writers who have lately in Ger- 
many thrown themselves with characteristic interest 
on the early history of Europe, are, besides the value 
of the results, a perpetual lesson of conscientious 
faithfulness and industry. We in England owe much 
to the diligence and sagacity of German investigators 
of our own history, like Dr. R. Pauli. And the 
French, who are usually credited with the power of 
brilliant generalization, and also with incapacity to 
resist its temptations, are beginning to tread on the 
heels of the Germans, and to remember that they are 
the countrymen of the old Benedictine scholars and 
critics of St. Maur. 

In a sketch of this kind I have not pretended to 
be careful as to scholarly accuracy in the forms of 
names. This is a book in which explanations cannot 



viii Preface. 

conveniently be given as to the reasons of change 
from old-fashioned ways of writing them ; and for the 
most part I have written them as they are commonly 
written in our popular histories. Students when they 
begin to enter into the details of history for them- 
selves will find the reasons in many instances for a 
change from the traditional form, and also the frequent 
difficulties of making it. 

Three small maps are added. But it cannot be too 
strongly impressed on students from the first, not only 
that they ought always to read with a map at their 
side, but that they need a special map for each period 
which they are studying. They cannot be too early 
made familiar with the truth that a map is a historical 
as well as a geographical picture, and represents on 
the background of unchanging nature the changing 
seats and fortunes of men. Such works as Spruner's 
Historical Atlas, or its improved form by Menke, 
now in course of publication, ought to be within 
reach of every reader of history; and no other maps 
can well make up for the want of them. 

R. W. C. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Chronological Table xhi 

INTRODUCTION. 

Division between ancient and modern historj'^ — Destruction 
of Jerusalem — Fall of Rome — Barbarian migrations — 
Gradually threaten the Empire — Internal decay — Division 
of East and West — Alaric ...... X 



CHAPTER I. 
Teutonic settlements in the West — Vandals — Burgundians — ■ 
Franks — West Goths — East Goths — The Huns and Attila 
•^^The Barbarian Patricians — Ricimer nominates Emperors 
—End of the Empire in the West — Romulus Augustulus 14 



CHAPTER II. 

The new nations— Gothic kingdom of Theoderic in Italy — • 
Burgundian — Vandal — Vv''est Gothic kingdom in Gaul and 
Spain — Arianism of the Goths — Frank kingdom — Clovis — • 
Frank Supremacy' — Efforts of the Empire — Justinian — Beli- 
sarius — Narses — Overthrow of Gothic kingdom in Italy and 
of Vandal kingdom in Africa — Lombards in Italy . . 30 



Contents, 



CHAPTER III. 

PAGE 

Condition of the Teutonic settlements — Three influences 
affecting the Teutonic settlers — i. Religion : the Christian 
bishops, the Christian Church and religion — 2. Roman 
law — 3. The Latin language — Gradual but slow revival of 
Latin civilization among the new nations .... 45 



CHAPTER IV. 

Conquest, of Britain by the Saxons and Angles ; gradual ; 
complete — Conversion of the English — Influence on the 
nation of this conversion 62 



CHAPTER V. 

The Franks — Their supremacy in the West — The Merovin- 
gian Kings, the line of Clovis — Decay of the family — The 
Mayors of the Palace — The Pipins — Rise of the Carolingian 
line — Alliance of Pipin's house with the Popes — Deposition 
of the last Merovingian with the Pope's sanction . . 75 



CHAPTER VI. 

Roman Empire in the East — Preserves civilization — Its strength 
— Justinian — Heraclius — Rise of the Mahometan power — 
Conquests of the Saracens — Isaurian and Macedonian 
dynasties — Prerogatives of the Emperors — Religious su- 
premacy .......... 98 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Carolingians — Charles the Great, King of the Franks and 
Lombards — Emperor of the Romans — His wars, legisla- 
tion, political system — Creator of the temporal power of 
the Popes — and of Germany 117 



Contents. xi 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE 
The Carolingians — Successors of Charles — Louis the Pious 
and his sons — Break up of the Empire — The Northmen — 
Fall of the various Carolingian lines — End of the Frank 
dominion 147 

CHAPTER IX. 

Consolidation and unity of the English people — The Kings 
of Wessex — Danish invasions — Egbert, Alfred, Edgar — 
Danish conquest — The Anglo-Saxon Church . , . 176 

CHAPTER X. 

Results of break-up of Frank Empire — New arrangement 
of Europe — The Papacy — New Kingdoms — Separation 
of France and Germany — Italy — The Northern King- 
doms — The Slave nations — Hungarians, Poles, Russians . 192 

CHAPTER XI. 

Retrospect of the times of transition from the Roman Empire 
to the European States of the Middle Ages . . . 215 

Index 220 



MAPS. 

1 Roman Empire (Eastern and Western) in the 
Fourth Century, shewing the Positions of the 
Northern Barbarians . . to face Title-page 

^ 2 Europe in the time of Odoacer, and 

South- Western Europe a.d. 525 . . " /. 31 

i 3 Europe, time of Charles the Great . " 149 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



The sign f marks the year of death. 



A.D. 

98-138 

138-180 

180-193 

193 

249 

250-260 

250 



286 

303-4 
306 



Trajan and Hadrian. 

The Antonines. 

Coinmodus. 

Severus elected by the Pannonian legions, f2ii. 

Decius elected by the Msesian legions. 

First State persecution of Christianity. 

Barbarian attacks beginning, (pp. 3, 4.) 



East : the Danube. 
251 Gothic wars : Decius defeated 

and slain. 
253-268 Goths ravage the East. 

269 Checked by Claudius. 

270 Checked by Aurelian : set- 

tled in Dacia. 



West : the Rhine. 



256 Franks : ravage 
Gaul and Spain. 

256 Sut'vi, Alanianni^ 
in Italy. 

270 Alaina7ini'vi\ Italy : 
defeated by Aure- 
lian. 

277 Franks and Bur- 
gundians defeated 
by Probus. 



Diocletian and Maximian (286-305). Two Augusti, 

with two Caesars (pp. 6, 7), 
Last great State persecution under Diocletian. 
Constantlne. Two Augusti, each with two Cassars (308). 



XIV. 



Chronological Tabic. 



I 



A.D, 
3IT-313 

325 



324-334 
337 
353 



361-363 
364 



382 

392 
395 



Edicts of Nicomedia and Milan in favor of toleration, 
Constantine, sole e-mperor, ■j'337. 
Cotincil of Nlccea. 
322 Gothic war. Goths checked by Constantine. 
331-2 Second Gothic war : Goths again checked. 
334 Vandals and Sarmatians defeated. 
Foundation and dedication of NEW ROME", Constanti- 
nople. 
Division of Empire between the three sons of Constan- 
tine. 
Reunion under Constantius the survivor. 
351 Battle of Miirsa; victory of East over West. 

Death of Magnentius. 
340-353 Franks and Alamanni defeated by Julian in the 

battle of Strasburg (357). 
360-375 Ulfiias, Gothic bishop, translates the Bible. 
Julian. 

Division of Empire, East and West. Valens and Valen- 
tinian. Constantinople and Milan, capitals. 
375 Goths driven by the Huns into the Empire. 
378 Battle of Hadrianople. Valens slain. 

Goths checked by Theodosius (379-395) ; settled on the 
Danube and in Thrace. 
Emperor Gratian (375-383) last Pontifex Alaximus, i. e., 

head of the heathen state religion. 
Reunion of Empire under Theodosius. 
Final division into East and West : 
Arcadius f4o8, and Honorius t423. 

Great barbarian invasion of the West. (pp. 8-11). 



Italy. 
395 Revolt of Alaric. 
396-7 Alaric in Greece. 
398 Alaric, king of Visigoths . 
400 Alaric in Italy. 
403 Stilicho beats him at Pollentia. 
405 Stilicho defeats Radagais. 



408 f Stilicho. Alaric before Rome. 

409 Second siege of Rome. 

410 Third siege, and sack of 

Rome : f Alaric. 
412 Visigoths, under Athaulf, 
leave Italy for Gaul. 



Rhine and Gaul. 



405 Great invasion 
across the Rhine. 
Vandals, Sueves, 
&c., p. 14. 

406 Vatidals under 

Gundachar, p. 14. 
409 Sleeves in Spain ; 

Hermanric. End 

of Roman rule in 

Britain. 
413 Biirgundians in 

Elsass. 

Frafiks in N. E. 

Gaul, p. 15. 



CJij-onological Table, xv. 



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XVI 



Chronological Table. 



A.D. Emperors. (East). 
474 Zeno. 



491 Anastasius J. 



518 Justin I. 
527 Ju.tinian (527- 
565). pp. 39; lOI. 



565 Justin II. 



578 
532 



Tiberius II. 
Maurice. 



A. D. Barbarians. 

477 f Genseric. ^lla in Sussex. 

481 Clovis, king of the Franks. 
(Merovingian line 481-751). 

486 Bailie of Soissoiis. Clovis de- 
feats Syagrius, p. 38. 

489 Ostrogoths, under Theoderic, 
attack and defeat Odoacer. 

493 Golhic kingdom of Theoderic in 
Italy (493-533), P- 33 

495 Cerdic lands ; founds Wessex, 

496 Battle of Tolbiac ; Clovis de- 

feats Alamanni. Clovis bap- 
tized. 
500 Clovis defeats Burgundians. 
507 Battle of Voulo7i 7iear Poitiers ; 
Clovis defeats West Goths, and 
conquers Aquitaine. 
511 f Clovis. Fourfold division of 
Frank ki?2gdoni. 
Boethius, "}'525. Symmachus, 
f526. Theoderic. fS^^. 
532 Burgnndiati kingdom extin- 
guished by the Franks. 
533-536 Belisarius destroys Vandal 

kingdom in Africa. 
536-554 (i) Belisarius (2) Narses, de- 
destroy Gothic kingdom in 
Italy, p. 39. 
547 Ida, king in Northumbria, p. 65. 
560 Ceawlin, the conqueror, king of 
Wessex ; -5]^thelbert, king of 
Kent. 
565 fBelisarius. fjustinian. 
567 or, 573 f Narses. 
568-70 Lombard kingdo7n iu Italy. 
(568-774). Alboin, p. 41. 
Irish Missions; St. Columba, 
Scotland, 520-597; St. Gall. 
— 1640, Alamannia. 
St. Columban. Burgundy, 
Italy, 565-615- 
590-604 Pope Gregory the Great. 
590-615 Agilulf and Theudehnda. Con- 
version of the Lombards from 
Arianism, p. 42. 
587 Reccared, king of Spain, em- 
braces Catholic faith : fall of 
Arianism among the West 
Goths, p. 79. 



Chro?iological Tabic. 



XVil 



A.D,. JImpcrors. 



602 Phocas. 

610 Heraolius. 

(610 641). 
p. io3. 
(Line of Herat lins 
610-711.) 



641 -j-Heraclius. 

Constantine III. 
Constans II, 



663 Constantine IV. 
(Pogonatus.) 



6S5 Justinian II. 
(68S-711.) 



694 Leontius. 



A.D. Barbarians. 

597 Augustine baptizes ^thelbert, 
p. 91. 
Avars. Persian wars. 
600-797 Power of the Avars. 

609 Mohammed preaches at Mecca. 
611-623 Wars of the Empire with Persia, 
p. 108. 
613 Frank kingdoms united under 
Clothar. 
617-633 Edwin, king of Northumbria. 
622 Flight of Mohammed. Hegira, 
626 Paulinus, bishop of the North- 
umbrians, 627, baptizes Edwin. 
626 Penda, king of tlie Mercians, 

631 Dagobert, sole king of Franks. 

Pipin the Elder, mayor. 
635-685 Greatness of Northumbria. 
Oswald. 
638 Division of Frank kingdom, 
Austrasiaand Ncustria, p. 87. 

632 fMohammed, Saracen con- 

quests begin, p. 109. 
635 Aidan and K, Osv/ald of North- 
umbria. Arabian conqutsts. 
632 Arabian invasions of Persia 
and Syria. 
632-638 Conquest of Syria. 
632-C51 Conquest of Persia. 
640 Alexandria taken. Conquest 
of Egypt. 



647-709 Conquest of Africa. 
662-678 Asia Minor invaded. 
66S-677 First siege of Constantinople. 
668-690 Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop 
of Canterbury, p. 71. 
Ebroin, Neustrian mayor of 
palace, 664-681, p. 91. 
680-775 St. Boniface, Apostle of Ger- 
many. 



687 



688 
697 



Battle of Testry. Ascendency 
of Austrasia. Pepin of Heristal, 
p. 91. 

Ina, king of Wessex. 
Beginning of the Doges of 
Venice. 



XVlll 



Chronological Table. 



A.D. Empcrois. 
697 Tiberius III, 
705-711 Justinian II. 
restored. 
711 f End of family 
of l-j eraclius. 
p. no. 
711-716 Philippicus. 
Anastasius II. 
TheodosiusIII. 
718 Leo III. the 
Isaurianf74i. 
p. no. 
{Isa2C7'ian line 71S-797.) 
p. no. 



741 



Constantine V. 
(Copronymus). 
p. 115. 



755 Leo IV. 

780 Constantine VI. 

and Irene. 
797 Constantine VI. 

deposed by 

Irene. 

797 Irene alone. 



A.D. Barbarians. 

Arabian invasioiis of the West. 



710 T rile lands in Spain. 

711 Battle of the (jiiadalcte. End 

cf Gothic kingdom, p. 83. 

713 Arab conquest of Spain, p. 83. 

714 f Pipin of Hcristal, p. 90. 
717 Cliarles IMartel, mayor. 

721 Arab invasion of trar.ce, p. 91. 
716-017 Greatness of Alcrcia. Ofia, p. 177 
726-728 Iconoclastic controversy (729- 

7S7). 
732 Battle of Tours or Poitiers : 

Charles defeats the Saracens, 

p. 91. 
741 Pope (Gregory III.) appeals to 

Franks against Lombards, p. 95 

■fCharlcs INIartel. 
741 Pipin the Little, p. 95. 
742 (?) Birth of Charles the Great. 
756 Fall of the Ommiad Caliphs 

at Damascus. 
752 Last ]iIcrovir7gia?t ( Childeric 

in.) deposed with Pope's sanc- 
tion. Pipin crowned^ p. 96. 
Carolingian line, 752 ; lasting to 

911 in Germany; to 987 in 

Gaul. 

754 Pope Stephen (752-756) in 

France ; crowns Pipin and 
his sons, p. 96. 

755 Division of the Caliphate. 

Abbassides at Bagdad ; Om- 
miads at Cordova. 
755-756 Lombard war ; Franks assist the 
pope, p. 97. 
768 tPipin : Charles and Carloman 
succeed. 

771 f Carloman : Charles, sole king, 

p. 119. 

772 Beginning of Saxon war for 

thirty years, p. 121. 

773-4 Overthrow of Desiderius : end 
of Lombard kingdom, p. 125. 

786-809 Haroun al Rashid, caliph. 

7C7 Images restored at seventh 
general council at Nice. Da- 
nish ships first mentioned in 
A. S. Chronicles. 



Ch7'onolo<:ical Table. 



XIX 



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7 O W 



BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Modern History is separated from ancient by two 
great and unparalleled catastrophes; and from the 
changes occasioned by these catastrophes in the ma- 
terials and conditions of society in Europe modern his- 
tory took its beginnings. One was the destruction of the 
Jewish State ajid temple. The other was the break-up 
of the Roman Empire. These two catastrophes, though 
divided by a considerable interval of time, and altogether 
different in their operation, were in various ways closely 
combined in their effects on the state of the world. They 
were catastrophes of the same order: the overthrow and 
passing away of the old, in things most deeply concern- 
ing human life, that the new might come. Without 
them that new settlement or direction of human affairs, 
under which the last fifteen centuries have been passed, 
would have been inconceivable and impossible. The 
fall of Jerusalem was the evident close of a theocracy 
which, up to that time, had for ages counted on a divine 
guarantee, and which looked forward, without doubt, to 
ending only in the consummation of a Messianic triumph. 
It was the apparent extinction of the visible kingdom of 
God on earth : the doom pronounced by the course of 



2 Beginning of the Middle Ages. 

events on claims and hopes which, to those who Hved 
under them, seemed the most sure of all things. The 
fall of the Roman empire was the overthrow of the 
greatest, the strongest, and the most firmly-settled State 
which the world had ever known : the dislocation and 
reversal of the long-received ideas and assumptions of 
mankind, of their habits of thinking, of the customs of 
life, of the conclusions of experience. The one cleared 
the ground for the Christian religion and the Christian 
Church, to which ancient Judaism, if it had still sub- 
sisted, unhumbled and active, with its wonderful 
history and uncompromising pretensions, would have 
been a most formidable rival. The other made room, 
and prepared materials, not only for new nations, but 
for new forms of pplitical and social order, then beyond 
all possibility of being anticipated or understood ; for 
the new objects and ambitions, the new powers and 
achievements, which have distinguished modern times, 
at their worst, as well as at their best, from those of all 
ancient civilizations. 

The world in the West, as known to us in history, 
was surrounded by a vague and unexplored waste of 
barbarism. During the first three centuries of the empire 
all in the South seemed settled, all in the North was 
unstable and in movement. In the eyes of civilized man- 
kind there were in the world two great empires of very 
unequal force : the eternal empire of Rome, secure as 
nature itself, and the Asiatic empire of the East, at one 
time held by a Parthian, then by Persian dynasties, 
often troublesome, but never a real rival to Rome for the 
allegiance of the nations around the focus of civilization, 
the Mediterranean Sea. India was still wrapt in mystery 
and fable. Outside the Roman and Persian borders, 
northwards and north-eastwards, there v/as a vast. 



Introduction. 3 

dimly-known chaos of numberless barbarous tongues 
and savage races, from which, from time to time, strange 
rumours reached the great Italian capital of the world, 
and unwelcome visitors showed themselves in the dis- 
tant provinces, on the Rhine and the Danube ; and 
contemporaneously with the beginning of the empire 
had begun a shaking of the nations, scarcely perceptible 
at first, but visibly growing in importance as time went 
on. But there, in what seemed to the majestic order of 
Rome a mere seething tumult of confused and unimpor- 
tant broils, was maturing the fate of the empire, and the 
beginnings of a new w^orld. It was the scene of that 
great movement and displacement of the masses of un- 
civilized mankind, to Avhich the Germans have given the 
name of the "Wandering of the Nations" ( Vdlkerwan- 
derimg). Long before it can be traced in history, this 
perpetual shifting of races, accompanied by the extermi- 
nation of the weaker and longest-settled by the stronger 
new-comers, had been the rule of the northern world. 
The causes which produced it became soon after the 
beginning of our era unusually active, and it went on for 
centuries, till the great social and political changes 
which it produced in the West brought it to a final con- 
dition of stable repose. An impulse, apparently, had 
been given from the heart of Asia, which added force to 
the natural struggle among the barbarian tribes for 
better and more convenient abodes. When the move- 
ment came to its height, it began to be sensibly felt on 
the frontiers of the empire. About the middle of the 
second century it called for serious efforts on the Dan- 
ube ; towards the end of the third it overleaped the 
barrier of the Rhine. By that time fresh internal changes 
had taken place in the Teutonic tribes themselves, first 
known to the Romans Their early names become 



4 Beginning of the Middle Ages. 

merged and lost in new ones; smaller bodies are fused 
together into larger ones. Tribes first heard of on the 
shores of the Northern Sea and the Baltic, Goths, Van- 
dals, Herules, Burgundians, Lombards, next appear, 
after an interval of obscurity, on the Euxine, the Danube, 
the Rhine; instead of the Chauci, the Cherusci of the 
campaigns of Drusus and Tiberius, or the Marcomanni 
of M. Aurelius, there appear great confederacies, some- 
times with old names like the Suevi, sometimes with 
new, as the Alamanni of the Upper, and the Franks of 
the Lower Rhine. In 250, the Goths, who in their mi- 
grations had come in contact with the Huns, and had fled 
before them, were becoming dangerous on the Danube; 
a Roman emperor, Decius, was defeated and slain by 
them. During the whole of the third century the con- 
federacy, then known as that of the Alamanni, was 
putting to the severest strain the efforts of emperors like 
Maximin, Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus to keep them 
from the Upper Rhine; and they ended by establishing 
themselves there, in spite of the victories, in the follow- 
ing century, of Julian and Gratian. In the year 240, the 
Germans of the Lower Rhine, no more known as the 
Chatti, Chamavi, Bructeri, and only in rhetoric as Sigam- 
brians, appear for the first time as the Franks, more 
furious, more enterprising, and more terrible in their 
ravages in Gaul than even the Alamanni. And the 
Burgundians, once settled between the Oder and the 
Vistula, then in their migrations driven eastward before 
the Goths, pushed themselves in between the Alamanni 
and the Franks. By the fourth century the presence of 
the barbarians had become recognised in its real propor- 
tions as a new and alarming feature in the condition of 
the world Constantino, Julian, Valentinian, Theodo- 
^ius, could defeat them, and attempt to terrify them by 



Introduction. 5 

bloody punishments, as Constantine exposed two Frank 
kings to the wild beasts, in the amphitheatre at Treves ; 
but the Roman victories were in vain. The advance of 
the barbarians was as certain and powerful as the rising 
of the tide. 

The Roman state, which was thus assailed without, 
was slowly undermined from within. The gloomy pages 
of Tacitus present the picture of a mighty empire, esta- 
blished apparently on the foundations which could not 
be moved, yet wrung and tortured by evils for which it 
seemed hopeless to look for end or remedy. The re- 
covery and health of this great but deeply-diseased body 
seemed inconceivable ; yet its subversion and disap- 
pearance seemed equally so amid the then forces of the 
world. But, as time went on, its fashions of corruption 
and vice increased in variety and enormity ; a general 
degradation of character and a lowering of level, in 
thought, in strength of action, and in customary mo- 
rality, set in; political decay, ill-success, and disaster 
grew greater and more familiar to men's minds. And 
the remarkable thing is, that neither exceptional virtue 
nor exceptional wisdom from time to time in its chiefs 
could overtake the increasing degeneracy and danger. 
There were no better rulers than the Antonines ; there 
were no abler ones than Trajan and Hadrian. Nothing 
could be nobler than the integrity and public spirit of 
soldiers and administrators like Julius Agricola, the type, 
we cannot doubt, of other great and high-minded Roman 
governors, the shame and condemnation of the crowd 
of base and cruel ones. And there is no more majestic 
monument of human jurisprudence than the system of 
law which grew up in the Roman law-courts. But the 
springs and principles which govern society had become 
«o fatally tainted that no temporary reaction towards 



6 Beginning of the Middle Ages. 

good, and no concurrence of beneficent institutions, 
availed to turn back the strong tide of evil tendency. 

Still up to the end of the fourth century nothing gave 
reason to anticipate the actual overthrow of that last 
and highest concentration of civilized life conceivable 
at the time, which the genius of Julius Caesar had 
imagined, and which Augustus had made a reality. It 
was still looked upon as part of the eternal order of the 
world. Serious and eventful changes had come about 
in the course of three centuries. The one visible danger 
to the empire, the increasing pressure of barbaric tribes 
on the north and the east, was more and more felt. It 
was becoming certain, not only that Roman armies 
might meet with ill-success in barbarian wars, but that 
barbarians were losing that awe of the empire which had 
kept them at a distance, and were becoming more au- 
dacious in their enterprises. There was an undoubted 
loosening of the bands, the customs, the political and 
civil instincts, the forces of authority, which had kept 
the empire together. Among the greatest innovations 
was the division of power between two or three emperors, 
and, even more serious still, the creation of a new and 
permanent capital, necessarily the rival of the hitherto 
unique centre of the power and majesty of the empire. 
But even with two emperors, and two or more seats of 
government, the constitution and unity of the empire 
seemed unimpaired and indestructible, whatever trials 
it might have to undergo. While the Roman Empire 
lasted on its old footing, no idea could have seemed 
more wild to most men than that it should ever cease to 
exist, or that society could be possible without it; and it 
was still apparently standing on its ancient foundations 
at the end of the fourth century. 

But with the fifth no one could mistake the signs of 



Introduction. 7 

change. It began to be evident that what had up to that 
time seemed the most incredible of all things vvas about 
to happen, and was in fact taking place. The empire, in 
one portion of it, was givnng way. The invaders could no 
longer be kept from Italy, from Gaul, from Africa, from 
Rome itself. Where they came and as long as they chose 
to stay, they became the masters ; they took, they left, 
they spoiled what they chose. They began to settle per- 
manently in the territories of the western portion of the 
empire. Finally its political power, especially in the 
West, began to pass into barbarian hands. Barbarian 
chiefs accepted or assumed its offices, chose or rejected, 
set up, deposed, or slew, its shadowy and short-lived 
emperors, and quarrelled with each other for the right to 
nominate to the name and title of Augustus. Like an 
army whose line has been cut, the different portions of 
the empire found their enemy interposed between them, 
and the West, detached from the East, and enveloped 
and pressed upon by its foes, offered a field where the 
struggle went on with the best chances for the invaders. 
All that had been done to accommodate the defensive 
resources of the empire to new and increasing dangers 
had been in vain. Desperate efforts, and efforts of the 
most varying and opposite kinds, had been made to up- 
hold the State, by Diocletian, by Constantine, by Julian, 
by Theodosius. Fresh and elaborate organization of the 
public service, civil and military ; adoption of the grow- 
ing popular religion ; return to the old one ; careful exa- 
mination and revision of the law; an elastic policy to- 
wards the barbarians, which according to the emergency, 
sometimes resisted and beat them back, sometimes 
tempted them off, sometimes took them into service, 
sometimes accepted and tried to educate or incorporate 
them as recognized allies of the empire— all these expe- 



8 Beginniiig of the Middle Ages. 

dients, adopted and carried out by rulers of strong and 
commanding character, failed to avert what seemed to be 
the irresistible course of things. All that they succeeded 
in doing was to attract and divert to the East what was 
most characteristic of the later empire, and to narrow 
the area over which its old traditions of government 
could be maintained. But the original seat and source 
of Roman greatness was left to its fate, and the pheno- 
menon which the West more and inore presented w^as 
that of the joint occupation of its lands and many of its 
cities by Teutonic and Latin, that is, by barbarian and 
civilized, populations. The barbarians were the masters, 
without as yet taking the trouble or having the know- 
ledge to be rulers. The older civilized inhabitants were 
neither subjects nor equals, but only in all trials of 
strength distinctly the weaker. And yet their civiliza- 
tion, maimed and weakened as it was, and naturally suf- 
fering loss more and more under such rude and unfavour- 
able conditions, was never finally extinguished. Even 
in its decay and waste it presented a contrast, felt by 
both parties, to the coarseness of barbarian manners 
and the imperfection of barbarian resources, and excited, 
when the races continued together, the interest, the un- 
conscious or suppressed admiration, and at last the 
emulation, of those who had done so much to crush and 
extirpate it. 

The fifth century opened with an increased activity 
and spirit of enterprise among the barbarian tribes which 
had been pressing on the empire, and had even gained 
a footing within its bounds. Three great waves of inva- 
sion may be distinguished : foremost and nearest were 
the Teutonic races; behind them came the Slaves ; be- 
hind them again, and pressing strongly on all in front, 
were the Turanian hordes from the centre of Asia, 



Introduction. g> 

having in their front line the Huns. In 395 the great 
Theodosius died. His dcatli closed a reign of sixteen 
years, the last reign of the ancient undivided empire, in 
which its old honour was maintained in arms and legis- 
lation. His death marks the real, though not the 
nominal, date of the fall of the united empire, and of 
the extinction, from henceforth inevitable, of the West- 
ern division of it. 

As soon as he had passed away the change set in with 
frightful rapidity. He left two young sons, Arcadius 
and Honorius, under whose names the empire was 
governed in the East and West respectively ; he left a 
number of generals and ministers, all of provincial or 
barbarian origin, to dispute among themselves for the 
real power of the State ; and not only on all the borders 
of the empire, but within its provinces, there were tribes 
and leagues of barbarians of many names, often beaten 
back and terribly chastised, but ever pushing forward 
again in fresh numbers, and now in some cases under 
chiefs who had learned war in the Roman service. The 
name of Alaric, the Visigoth, rises above those of the 
crowd of barbarian chiefs who tried their fortune in this 
moment of the weakness of the empire. The Visigoths, 
or West Goths, were a Teutonic tribe which had fled for 
refuge from their implacable enemies, the Huns of the 
Tartar steppes, into Roman territory. They had re- 
ceived reluctant and doubtful hospitality from the Impe- 
rial Government in the lands south of the Danube ; and 
through vicissitudes of peace and war, friendship and 
treachery, they had become better acquainted with their 
Roman neighbours and hosts than any of the barbarian 
races. First of the Teutonic races, they had in large 
numbers accepted Christianity ; they had learned it 
from their Roman captives, or at the Court of Constan- 



lo Bx ginning of the Middle Ages. 

tinople, and at last from a teacher of their own race, 
Ulfila, the first founder of Teutonic literature, who in 
translating the Bible gave the barbarians for the first 
time a written language, and invented for them an 
alphabet. The court religion at the time was Arianism, 
the doctrine of the Egyptian Presbyter, Arius, which 
denied the true Godhead of Jesus Christ. It was an 
important and formidable departure from the belief of 
the Christian Church, as to the chief object of its faith 
and worship ; the first of many which marked these 
centuries. From Constantinople the Goths adopted it. 
On the death of Theodosius, Alaric conceived the idea 
of carving out for himself a kingdom and an indepen- 
dent State from the loosely-connected provinces of the 
empire. He invaded first Greece, and then Italy. Ala- 
ric was a soldier not unworthy of his Roman masters. 
For a time he was confronted and kept in check by 
another general of equal genius for war, like himself 
of Teutonic blood, Stilicho, the Vandal, the trusted 
soldier of Theodosius, who had left him guardian of 
Honorius, the Western emperor. Stilicho, after putting 
forth for the last time the vigour of a Roman general on 
the German frontier, concentrated the forces of the State 
for the defence of Italy, leaving the distant provinces to 
themselves. The garrisons were withdrawn from Britain. 
Goths and Huns were enlisted and disciplined for the 
service of the empire which their kinsmen were attack- 
ing. Against Stilicho's courage, activity, and coolness, 
Alaric vainly tried to force his way into Italy and to 
Rome. At PoUentia, on the Tanaro, south-west of Milan, 
Stilicho, on Easter Day, 403, gained a bloody though in- 
complete victory, Alaric saved his broken army by a 
daring and successful retreat, but only to meet with an- 
other overthrow at Verona, At Florence (405) Stilicho 



Introduction. 1 1 

foiled another and fiercer Gothic or Slavonian irruption 
into Italy under Radagais. But the Western empire was 
not to be saved. Rightly or wrongly, the victorious and 
perhaps ambitious soldier awakened the jealousy of 
rivals and the suspicions of his feeble master. Stilicho, 
Alaric's most formidable antagonist, had, for whatever 
reason, more than once allowed his foe to escape, and 
with the obscure and tortuous policy common to the 
time kept open negotiations with him, even at the mo- 
ment of his own success. He had even proposed to the 
Roman Senate to buy off Alaric's hostility by honours 
or payments of money. Stilicho's enemies persuaded 
Honorius of his general's designs against the State; a 
mutiny was created against Stilicho in the army; his 
friends were murdered ; and finally Honorius consented 
to condemn and to put to death, on the charge of trea- 
son, the great chief who within five years had won for 
him the three greatest of recent Roman victories. Then 
the invaders sprang in on every side. Alaric, hanging 
on the north-eastern frontier, among the Julian Alps, 
had been watching the intrigues of the Italian Court, 
now removed from Rome and Milan to the protection 
of the marshes of Ravenna. These intrigues were to 
deliver him from his great enemy. On the 23d of 
August 408 the head of Stilicho fell under the execu- 
tioner's sword. In October Alaric was under the walls 
of Rome. 

He came three times in three successive years ; and 
twice he retired. The first time he spared the city for 
an enormous ransom. The second time he imposed on 
the city and empire a puppet mock-emperor, whom a 
few months afterwards he degraded as unceremoniously 
as he had set him up. Alaric's brief stern words were 
remembered as well as his deeds. To the hermit who 

c 



1 2 Beginning of the Aliddle Ages. 

bade him in tlic name of religion retire from the great 
cicy, he rephed that it was God's will and call that drove 
him on. To the Romans who threatened him with the 
numbers of their population — "the thicker the hay," 
was his answer, "the easier mown." When, astounded 
at his enormous demands, the Romans asked him, 
"what then would he leave them?" he answered "your 
lives." But the third year, 410, the imperial city, the 
sacred, the inviolate, which since the almost mythical, 
visitation of Brennus and his Gauls had only once seen 
a foreign enemy from her walls, and never within them, 
beheld the amazing, the inconceivable sight — her streets, 
her palaces, broken into and sacked by barbarians 
whom of late days she had, indeed, seen among the 
mercenaries who served her, but whom of old she knew 
only as the slaves who fought with one another to make 
her sport in her gladiatorial shows. The end of the 
world must have seemed at Rome to have come when 
the city of Caesar and Augustus, with its gold, its mar- 
ble, its refinement, was given over to the Gothic spoilers. 
She might have seen her revenge in the death within a 
few weeks of the assailant who at first dared to break 
through the vain terror of her presence, and the idle 
guard of her walls. 

But the blow had been struck, though Alaric had 
died who struck it. From that day forth the Teutonic 
nations, whom the Romans classed together under the 
common name of barbarians, looked upon the lands of 
the Western portion of the empire as given over to them 
in possession. From that day forth their chiefs arrived 
on the scene, not only to play the customary game of 
war, not merely to ravage and plunder, but to carry out 
the idea of Alaric— to become kings, to win kingdoms, 
to create nations. For a while the new condition of 



Introduction, 13 

things seemed incredible to those accustomed to the old 
Roman central sway. There were fierce, even for a 
time successful, attempts to dispute and resist the change. 
The name and the authcu^ity of the Roman emperor had 
too fast a hold even on the Teutonic mind to be more 
than weakened: the Roman empire lasted on more than 
fifty years in the West ; and at Constantinople it had 
always to be reckoned with as a power wiiich in strong 
hands was a formidable one. How strong was still the 
idea of the empire, and how obstinate the customary awe 
and respect for its authority, is shown in two phenomena 
which are continually appearing in these times of con- 
fusion. One is the weight with which the imperial name, 
even when borne by so weak an emperor as Honorius, 
was seen to press upon local rebellions on the part of 
subjects of the empire. In spite of his personal insig- 
nificance, in spite of the deep humiliations of his reign, 
in spite of the destruction of Stilicho, the Gothic con- 
quest, the sack of Rome, no rival emperor, and there 
were seven in the course of five years, could maintain his 
title against the son of Theodosius. The other is, that 
the barbarian chiefs who attacked the empire asked for 
and were proud of its honours and titles. Alaric, King 
of the Goths, insisted at the same time on being recog- 
nized as an officer in the Roman service, the Master- 
General of Illyricum. His successor, Athaulf, while 
conquering in Gaul, and Wallia, while conquering in 
Spain, professed to restore these provinces to the obe- 
dience of Honorius. But nevertheless the great revo- 
lution, which was to override all resisting forces, and the 
deeply-planted habits of ages, had come. From Alaric 
and his victorious policy two things date, which 
speedily altered the condition of the Latin world. One 
was the intrusion and interference of the barbarian 



14 Beginning of the Middle Ages. A. D. 

power as a recognized political element in the Roman 
State. The other was the planting within its borders of 
new nations, each of them growing in its own way into 
an independent State, with its own interests, and cus- 
toms, and policy, and coming less and less to acknow- 
ledge, even in the most shadowy form, the authority or 
even the existence of the empire in the West. 



CHAPTER I. 

TEUTONIC SETTLEMENTS IN THE WEST. FALL OF THE 
EMPIRE IN THE WEST. (406-476). 

The impulse given by the enterprises and successes of 
Alaric showed itself in the invasion of the Western pro- 
vinces by various Teutonic tribes, who henceforth held 
possession of what they invaded. On the last day of 
the year in which Stilicho destroyed the Van- 
Vandals m ^,^1 Radagais and his mixed army before 

Oaul, 406. * _ -' 

Florence (405), another portion of the Van- 
dals, with their confederate tribes, Sueves, Burgundians, 
Alans, found their way into Gaul, perhaps, as Gibbon 
suggests; across the frozen Rhine, partly ravaging, 
partly settling, partly pushing to further conquest, but 
seldom returning to their former seats. In the year in 

which Alaric set up and then degraded his 
In Spain, mock emperor Attalus, after the siege of 

Rome (409), Sueves and Vandals, a part of 
this host, under Hermanric, crossed the Pyrenees into 
the rich and peaceful province of Spain. Three years 

after the sack of Rome and the death of Ala- 
Burgundians, ^.j^ (413), the Burgundians, who, in company 

with the Vandals, crossed the Rhine in 406, 



406-476. Vandals, Burgundians, Franks, Goths. 15 

had occupied the left bank of the middle Rhine ; thence 
they gradually spread westwards and southwards into 
Gaul ; and the result, after many vicissitudes, was the 
foundation of a kingdom of the Burgundians under Gun- 
dachar (416-436), Gundeuch (456-463), and the more 
famous Gundobad, the lawgiver {472-510). It was the 
first of the many Burgundies that were to be, fixing a 
famous name in the new geography of the West, and 
impressing a distinct character on the population which 
bore that name. No limits and no political conditions 
varied so much as those of the " Burgundies," kingdoms, 
dukedoms, counties, provinces, long striving after an in- 
dependence, which could not be maintained. The first 
Burgundy of Gundachar and Gundobad comprised the 
valleys of the Rhone and the Saone, with western Swit- 
zerland and Savoy, from the Alps and the Jura as far as 
the Durance, and even at one time to Avignon and 
Marseilles. Almost at the same time a confederation, or 
rather two confederations, or German tribes, ^ , 

Franks. 

whose name was to fill a yet greater place 
in history, the Franks, who had finally settled from the 
Main along the lower Rhine, and what is now Belgium, 
appear defending the Roman frontier against the invad- 
ing Vandals. They had long disturbed the empire by 
their ferocity and spirit of adventure. They had by this 
time gained room within its borders, and become it? 
allies; and they even suffered severe losses in fighting 
for it. But, as the defence of the empire became hope' 
less, they soon followed the invading movement, anc? 
pressed on to the valleys of the Moselle, the Meuse, thr 
Scheldt, and the Somme, and the plains and 
cities of what is now Champagne. And im- Goth« ^412. 
mediately after the death of Alaric, who had 
sacked Rome and occupied Italy, the Goths, under thei> 



1 6 Beginning of the Middle Ages. A. d. 

new leader Athaulf, a name which has been softened 
and Latinized into Adolphus, adopted the momentous 
resolution of relinquishing Italy, and seeking their for- 
tune in the West. Bearing with them the treasures of 
Alaric, they marched into Gaul ; they occupied step by 
step, in the course of the century, nearly the whole of 
the South between the Rhone, the Loire, the Mediterra- 
nean, and the ocean ; and then poured into 
414-419- Spain, driving before them or subduing the 

earher invaders, Vandals, Sueves, Alans. The Roman 
city of Toulouse became their capital. Before the mid- 
dle of the fifth century, the kingdom of the 
J19-451 "'^ ^' West Goths had become the mightiest among 
its neighbours. It stretched from the Loire 
to the mouth of the Tagus and the Columns of Hercules. 
It possessed the great cities of Aquitaine, Narbonne, 
Bordeaux, Toulouse. It had absorbed tlie last fragment 
of independent Roman Gaul, Auvergne. In Spain it 
had cooped up the earlier invaders, the Sueves, into the 
mountains of Asturias and Gallicia. It had driven the 
Vandals into Africa. It had rapidly assumed an organized 
shape, with its peculiar polity, its half Roman legislation, 
its national councils. If had replaced the empire in the 
West, and it seemed as if a State had been founded 
which was to unite in one Gaul and Spain, and take the 
lead in the new order of things; as if a Gothia or Goth- 
land was to supplant the name of Gaul or Rome. 
This magnificent prospect was not to be ful- 
^^t%s. ^W^^^ The lands north and south of the 

Pvrenees were not to continue united, and 
the Goths were not to be the leaders of Western Europe. 
But from the Goths of Toulouse sprang a line of kings 
which ruled in Spain, and shaped its fortune and history 
till the Mahometan Conquest (71 1). It was to be long 



429- Vandals in Spain, 17 

indeed before the kingdoms, as we know them, of France 
and Spain began to appear above the confusion ; but 
the firsc rude courses of the foundations on which, 
through sucli various changes, they were to rise were 
laid in the Teutonic movement, in which Alaric led the 
way. 

Another invasion, more fatal in its consequences to 
the empire, though itself transient as a conquest, was 
the consequence of the Gothic invasion of 
Spain. The Vandals in Spain, th3 fore- JJ|g ^^^' 

runners of the Goths, pressed by the com- 
bined power of the Gothic kingdom and the Roman pro- 
vincials, and tempted by the invitation of a Roman 
governor, Count Boniface, who had been stung into 
treason by the intrigues at Ravenna, passed into Africa 
under Genseric, the most crafty, the most perfidious, the 
most ruthless iif the barbarian kings, and of all of them 
the most implacable foe of Rome and its civilization. The 
late repentance and the resistance of Count Boniface 
could not avert the Vandal conquest and the desolation 
of Africa. The death of St. Augustine during the siege 
of his city, Hippo, in 4.30, and the surprise of Carthage 
in 439, mark the date of the ruin of Roman civihza- 
tion on the southern shore of the Mediterranean ; a civi- 
lization that had retained more unalloyed than that of 
any other province the peculiar Latin type, the rough- 
ness and original force of the Latin mind and character. 
The Vandal conquest, short-lived as it was compared 
with other barbarian occupations, dealt a far heavier 
blow than they to the weakened stability of the empire, 
it was not only the severance from it of a great province, 
a second home of Latin letters and habits; but during 
the long reign of Genseric (429-477) Rome and Italy 
were made acquainted with two new forms of suffering. 



1 8 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

To the ordinary plagues of barbarian invasion, were now 
added starvation and piracy. Africa had been, with 
Egypt, the great store-house from which Italy had drawn 
its usual supplies of corn; Africa was now in the hands 
of a deadly enemy, Egypt in those of the rival and 
unfriendly Eastern emperor. And next, the possession 
of Carthage suggested to Genseric the ambition of being 
master, not of Africa only, but of the Mediterranean. 
The Vandal fleets ravaged and tormented the Mediter- 
ranean coasts, like those of Haireddin Barbarossa and 
the Barbary rovers of later ages. "Whither shall we 
sail?" asked Genseric's pilot. " Sail to those, with whom 
God is angry," was the reply. 

Thus in the first half of the fifth century the empire 
was broken up in the West. Everywhere out of Italy, 
in Gaul, in Spain, in Africa, the new comers were the 
masters. The separation from the empire, at the begin- 
ning of the fifth century, of the island of Bri- 

Britain. tain, and of the Continental province which 

409. ^ 

afterwards bore the same name, neither of 
which were again to be united to it, rather marked than 
contributed to the decline of Rome. In the anarchy of 
the West, the soldiery in Britain, or those of them who 
had not been withdrawn by StiHcho, long accustomed to 
claim a voice in the choice of emperors, set up a succes- 
sion of candidates for the empire, one of whom, with the 
famous name of Constantine, disputed for a time the im- 
perial title with Honorins, and the possession of Gaul 
and Spain with the Goths {407-411). The Goths, pro- 
fessing to serve the empire, united with the soldiers of 
Honorius, and overthrew the last Western Constantine, 
and, after him, all the other provincial rivals of Hono- 
rius, who, in the universal confusion, ventured to strike 
for power (41 1-416), But the empire finally retired from 



400-450- Vandals in Africa — Britain. 19 

the island of Britain. An obscure interval of troubled 
independence succeeded ; and in the middle of the cen- 
tury Jutes, Saxons and Angles were beginning their 
conquests. 

Yet the empire, as has been said, in the opinion and 
feeling of men, still lasted under these strange conditions. 
The Teutonic invaders for the most part 
professed to acknowledge its existence and Gradual 

. . g'Ving wiy 

authority, to respect its laws, though claim- of the impe- 

, , , - , rial system. 

mg to be themselves exempt from them, to 
serve it after their own manner as its officers and sol- 
diers, to call themselves its " guests," or its " confede- 
rates," even in the possessions which they had either 
seized, or acquired by a forced sale. Its civil adminis- 
tration still went on, at least, for the Roman population, 
side by side with the customs and royal jurisdiction of 
the military occupiers. The position of the Teutonic 
conquerors and settlers was analogous to that of the 
early English conquerors in India, under the Mogul 
empire. They were in it, but not of it. Its paramount 
title and supremacy were supposed, where these did not 
come into collision with the interests of the conquerors. 
Its sanctions, when convenient, were sought for, and 
made useful to give legitimacy to what the sword had 
won. In stronger hands, and under more favourable 
circumstances, the empire might have lasted on, as in 
the East; and, suiting itself to its altered circumstances, 
have perhaps recovered its ground, by incorporating and 
assimilating to itself, according to its old favourite and 
successful policy, its new subjects, who, with all their 
fierce vigour, were not unwilling to be civilized. But in 
the course of the century, two things, a fresh and more 
tremendous irruption of barbarians, and a fatal innova- 
tion in domestic policy, finally shattered for the time 



20 Beginning of the Aliddle Ages. a. d. 

the imperial system in the West, The irruption was 
the invasion of Attila and the Huns. The innovation 
was the adoption, as a settled custom, of what Alaric had 
thought of as a temporary expedient, — perhaps, had only 
done in mocktry. A foreign soldier, master of the mili- 
tary force of the empire, claimed, and was allowed, to 
make and unmake the emperors of the West. 

The invasion of the Huns was the appearance of en- 
tirely new actors in the great tragedy. Between the 
^, ,, Rom.an world and the German invaders 

The Huns 

and Attila, there were affinities, though they might be 
"^■"■^ ''^■'' subtle and obscure, of race, of language, of 

thought, and moral ideas ; and there had grown up be- 
tween them the long familiarity of alternate Vv^ar and 
peace. They had even met half-way in religious ideas, 
and Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, imder the form of 
Arianism, had embraced Christianity with sometim.es 
fanatical zeal. But the Huns were not like Goths and 
Vandals, a Teutonic or even a Slave people. They be- 
longed to that terrible race whose original seats were in 
the vast central table-land of Asia ; who under various 
names, Huns, Tartars, Mongols, Turks, have made it 
their boast to devastate for the sake of devastation, and 
from whom sprung the most renowned among the de- 
stroyers of men, Attila, Genghiz, Timonr, the Ottomans. 
It is a race which long experience has shown to be less 
than any other in sympathy with Western civilization, 
and more obstinately intractable to its influ- 
About A. i). ence. The Huns themselves, impelled 
^°°" westwards by the wars which agitated the 

vast deserts stretching from the Volga to China, had 
driven before them in frantic terror the many tribes of 
the German stock which had shaken the empire ; and 
they had been for some time hovering on its eastern 



433~453* "^'^^ Huns under Attila. 21 

frontier, taking part like other barbarians in its distur- 
bances and alliances. Emperors paid them tribute, 
and Roman generals kept up a politic or a questionable 
correspondence with them. Stilicho had detachments 
of Huns in the armies which fought against Alaric ; the 
greatest Roman soldier after Stilicho, — and, like Stilicho, 
of barbarian parentage — ^Aetius, who was to be their 
most formidable antagonist, had been a hostage and a 
messmate in their camps ; he had followed a common 
practice of the time when he invited the Huns to the 
frontiers of Italy to support a candidate for the imperial 
dignity. About 433, Attila, the son of Mundzukh, like 
Charles the Great, equally famous in history and legend, 
became their king. Attila was the exact prototype and 
forerunner of the Turkish chiefs of the house of Othman. 
In his profound hatred of civilized men, in his scorn of 
their knowledge, their arts, their habits and religion, 
and, in spite of this, in his systematic use of them as his 
secretaries and officers, in his rapacity combined with 
personal simplicity of life, in his insatiate and indiscri- 
minate destructiveness, in the cunning which veiled 
itself under rudeness, in his extravagant arrogance and 
audacious pretensions, in his sensuality, in his unscrupu- 
lous and far-reaching designs, in his ruthless cruelty 
joined with capricious displays of generosity, mercy, 
and good faith, we see the image of the irreclaimable 
Turkish barbarians who ten centuries later were to ex- 
tinguish the civilization of Europe. The attraction of 
Attila's daring character, and his genius for the war 
which nomadic tribes delight in, gave him absolute 
ascendency over his nation, and over the Teutonic and 
Slavonic tribes near him. Like other conquerors of 
his race, he imagined and attempted an empire of ra- 
vage and desolation, a vast hunting ground and preserve. 



22 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

in which men and their works should supply the ob- 
jects and zest of the chase. The one power on earth 
was to be the terror of Attila's name. The one pe- 
nalty of disobedience and opposition was to be the 
edge of Attila's sword. He humbled and made subjects 
of the barbarians round him. He insulted and ravaged 
the Eastern empire up to the walls of Constantinople. He 
revived the old feud with the Visigoths. 
433-441. Then he picked a quarrel with Valentinian 

HI. and the Court of Ravenna. He claimed some 
Church spoils, said to have been stolen. He claimed 
Honoria, the sister of the Emperor, as his betrothed 
bride. Keen and shrewd in his views of policy, he en- 
tered into an alliance with Genseric and the Vandals of 
Africa, who were to attack Italy. Ard at last affecting 
to be the soldier of the empire against the rebellious 
Visigoths, at the head of the ferocious horsemen whom 
for years he had been gathering round him in the plains 
between the Theyss and the Danube, where his wooden 
city and wooden palace were built, he burst with the 
speed and terror of a tempest on central and western 
Europe. 

He passed through Germany into Gaul, sweeping 
along with him in his course, as confederates or subjects, 
a mixed multitude of many races, and visiting with im- 
partial havoc and slaughter, the Roman cities and the 
Gothic settlements. Romans and Goths forgot their 
own quarrels in their panic and distress. The ablest of 
Roman generals, Aetius, and the most powerful of the 
Gothic kings, Theodoric of Toulouse, joined 

June 23, 451. , . r ' 1 1 • • • 

theirtorces, and were onlyjust m time to save 
Orleans, and prevent the host of the Huns from burst- 
ing the barrier of the Loire. Attila retired and waited 
for them in the plains of Chalons, plains made by nature, 



453- Attila — Battle of Cha 'ons. 23 

and used in our own days, for the encampment of great 
armies. The wild and tremendous battle of 
Chalons stayed the advance of the Huns 001^45^ 

into Gaul. But it did not stay the raging 
torrent from pouring over Italy. There was no one to 
relieve Aquileia as Orleans had been relieved. Aquileia 
perished, and many of its sister cities of the north of 
Italy. This absolute destruction of homes and cities, 
and the searching and unsparing keenness of the sword 
of Attila, from which there was neither refuge or mercy, 
drove the miserable remnant of the population of the 
mainland to seek their only escape in the islands and 
lagoons. The fugitives knew not what they were pre- 
paring ; out of this scattered remnant and the lagoons 
which sheltered them, Venice arose. Attila advanced 
towards Rome. The conqueror of Chalons, Aetius, hung 
on his march, but was unable to arrest him. But Attila's 
army was suffering from exhaustion and disease, and he 
yielded, at least, for the time, to the supplications and 
offers of the Roman ambassadors, one of whom was the 
great Pope Leo. One of the conditions of peace, and 
the most shameful one, was that he should add a Roman 
princess of imperial rank to the crowd of his innumera- 
ble wives. But it was not to be. He retired to recruit 
himself in his wooden village in the open plains between 

the Thevss and the Danube, and he was cut 

453. 

off by a sudden and mysterious death. His 
empire had no territorial basis, and fell to pieces at his 
death. His sons were less able robber chiefs than their 
father, and they soon disappeared from his- 
tory. German legends softened him into 
the King Etzel of the Nibelungen Lied. The Latin tra- 
ditions of Gaul gave him the name of the Scourge of 
God, and supposed that he gloried in it. The remains 



24 Begin/iifig of the Middle Ages. a. d. 453. 

of his horde retired eastwards, to reappear in the sixth 
century under the name of the Avars and, perhaps, the 
Bulgarians. 

But, in the desolations of Attila, the empire had 
learned a new experience of its helplessness Aetius 
and the victory of Chalons could save a province that in 
its chiefs and its interests was already more barbarian 
than Roman ; but they could not avert the humiliation 
of ransoming Rome by the most ignominious conditions. 
And what Attila had left for the tmie uncompleted, Gen- 
seric finished. In the respite gained by Attila's depar- 
ture, the Court of Ravenna was desolated by domestic 
outrages, and fierce quarrels. As Honorius, jealous of 
Stilicho, had put to death the conqueror of Alaric and 
Radagais, so Valentinian III., as incapable and even 
more vindictive than Honorius, was provoked by the 
pretensions of Aetius, and murdered with his own hand 
the vanquisher of Attila (454). The death of Stilicho 

had been followed by the sack of Rome by 
' '' ^' Alaric. The death of Aetius v>'as followed 
not only by the assassination of the emperor and its train 
of usurpations and murders, but by a second sack of 
Rome, this time by the Vandals of Genseric. A Roman 
Count to avenge his wrongs had invited Genseric to 

Africa. A Roman Empress, Eudoxia, to 

Second sack . . . , 

of Rome, avengc her wrongs, mvUed the pn-ate-kmg 

June, 435. of Carthage to assault Rome. In the very 
year (455) in which the superstitious looked for the com- 
pletion of the fated twelve centuries of Roman power, a 
year after the murder of Aetius, the Vandal fleet from 
Carthage occupied the mouth of the Tiber. Genseric 
succeeded where Hannibal had failed, and completed 
Alaric's terrible chastisement of the sacred city, from 
which Attila himself two years before had shrunk. The 



A. D. 455. Second Sack of Rome by Gens eric. 25 

intercession of Pope Leo, wliich had availed with At- 
tila, did not stay Genseric. It availed to prevent slaugh- 
ter, but the pillage was more unsparing, and the havoc 
more irremediable, than that under Alaric half a cen^ 
tury before. Genseric sailed away with the spoils of 
Rome, with the Empress Eudoxia and thousands of cap- 
tives, with trophies of his victory over all that was most 
venerable in the ancient world; the gilded titles of the 
Capitol, the golden table and the golden candlestick 
brought by Titus from Jerusalem. Two great arma- 
das were fitted out, one by the Emperor Majorian in the 
West (458-460), the other by the Emperor Leo in the 
East (468), to crush the Vandal power, and avenge the 
sack of Rome. Both were surprised in harbour, and 
destroyed by the fleets and fire ships of Genseric. 

The genius and more than the fortune of the 

1 • J • 429-477. 

old Carthaginian heroes seemed revived m 

the barbarian king. For nearly fifty years he insulted 
and humbled Rome ; and he lived to see the extinction 
of the empire of the We-^t 

But this extinction of the Western empire was ulti- 
mately determined by fatal changes in the state itself. 
There, too, finally and irrevocably, though 

_ , . J. . - . i- Barbarian 

at first under the disguise of ancient forms, "Patricians." 
the barbarian had forced his way, and es- 
tablished himself first in the control, and then in the 
possession, of whit political power still remained to Italy 
and Rome. The emperors had derived their titles either 
from hsreditary claims, or from their own bold enter- 
prise, or from the choice of the senate or army, or from 
the nomination of an imperial colleague. Yxom. Avi- 
But in the course of the last *wenty years Remains" 
of the Western empire, this power of Augustulus, 
choosing the emperor passed into the 



26 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 455-476. 

hands of the barbarian "Patricians" in the West, a 
title of high dignity invented by Constantine, and now 
given to the chiefs of the foreign troops, mostly recruited 
from the tribes of Germany and the Danube, who were 
the strength of the armies of Rome, and had become its 
real masters. In the last years of Theodosius, Arbogast, 

the Frank chief of the military levies of the 
^^^ ^^ ' West, after murdering his master, the boy- 

emperor Valentinian II., had attempted to make an em- 
peror of his own creature, Eugenius ; but Theodosius 
was still alive, and the attempt was signally punished. 
After the second siege of Rome, Alaric had imposed an 
emperor, Attains, on the Roman Senate as the rival of 
Honorius. The step was intended to put a pressure on 
Honorius; but Alaric used his nominee as if to make 
sport for himself; and the majesty of the greatest of 
earthly names suffered its last and fi/.tal indignity, when 
the Emperor Attalus, at the caprice and convenience of 

a barbarian patron, was, to use Gibbon's 
*^ ' words, " promoted, degraded, insulted, re- 

stored, again degraded, and again insulted, and finally 
abandoned to his fate," the contemptuous revenge of his 
rival. 

The precedent set by Alaric was not lost. After the 
death of Valentinian III., the unworthy grandson of the 
great Theodosius, the first thought of the barbarian 
chiefs was, not to destroy or usurp the Imperial name, 
•but to secure to themselves the nomination of the em- 
peror. Avitus, chosen in Gaul under the influence of 

the West Gothic King of Toulouse, Theo- 
^^^' deric II., was accepted for a time, as the 

Western emperor, by the Roman Senate, and by the 
Court of Constantinople. But another barbarian, Rici- 
mer the Sueve, ambitious, successful, and popular, had 



A . D . 4 7 2 . Third Sack of Rome. 2 7 

succeeded to the command of the "federated" foreign 
bands which formed the strength of the imperial army 
in Italy. Ricimer would not be a king, but he adopted 
as a settled policy the expedient, or the insulting jest, of 
Alaric. What Theoderic the Visi-Goth had given at a 
distance in Gaul, Ricimer the Sueve, the master general 
of the Italian armies of the empire, claimed to give on 
the spot, at Rome. He deposed Avitus, and probably 
murdered him. Under his direction, the Senate chose 
Majorian. Majorian was too able, too public-spirited, 
perhaps too independent for the barbarian Patrician ; 
Majorian, at a moment of ill-fortune, was deposed and 
got rid of. Ricimer's next nominee, Severus, 
seems to have been too feeble and incapa- '*^^''* ^' 

ble for his impatient master; at any rate, he is reported 
to have been made away with. Then, at a moment of 
extreme danger, in the hope of assistance from Leo, the 
Eastern emperor, against the attacks of Genseric, Rici- 
mer accepted an emperor, chosen at Constantinople, the 
Greek Anthemius, whose daughter he married. But 
Anthemius was not content to be simply the 
tool and the screen of the Patrician. Cool- "* ^' 

ness and jealousies followed ; Ricimer determined on a 
quarrel, and all attempts to reconcile them failed. Rici- 
mer set up his fourth emperor, Olybrius, and at the head 
of a barbarian army attacked and slew Anthemius. For 
the third time Rome was stormed and de-' Third sack 
livered over to a foreign soldiery, in this of Rome, 
case nominally in her own service. Rici- 
mer and Olybrius both died a few months afterwards, 
and the empire in the West was left without its nominal 
or real head. A refugee Burgundian king, Ricimer's 
nephew, Gundobad, whom Ricimer had protected, and 
who cared little for anything but his lost Burgundian in- 

D 



28 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 476. 

heritance, found himself successor to Ricimer as Patri- 
cian in Italy. The Patrician Gundobad, following Rici- 
mer's example, conferred the title of Augustus on an 
officer of the imperial guard, Glycerius. It is hard to 
imagine anythmg more grotesque in circumstances, and 
more tragical in its substance, than the chance of a Bur- 
gundian fugitive having, by the accident of the moment, 
the business thrust upon him of disposing of the majesty 
of the empire, and of looking out in Ricimer's mixed 
host for a successor to the honours of the mighty line of 
men who had ruled from Augustus to Constantine. But 
the extravagance of ignominy was not exhausted. A 

rival emperor, Julius Nepos, compelled Gly- 
473-474- cerius to exchange the inheritance of the 

Caesars for the bishopric of Salona ; again, the bishop of 
Salona in due time found his fallen rival Nepos in his 
power, and murdered him. In the next turn of fortune, 
a former secretary of Attila, Orestes, had become Patri- 
cian, and general of the barbarian troops ; like Ricimer, 
not caring or not venturing to become emperor himself, 

he proclaimed his son emperor, to whom by 

a strange chance, as if in mockery of his for- 
tune, had been given the names of the first king and the 
first emperor of Rome, Romulus Augustus, soon turned 
in derision into the diminutive " Augustulus." But Ores- 
tes failed to play the part of Ricimer. A younger and 
more daring barbarian adventurer, Odoacer the Herule, 
or Rugian, bid higher for the allegiance of the army. 
Orestes was slain, and the young emperor was left to the 

mercy of Odoacer. In singular and signifi- 
^'^' cant contrast to the common Ubage when a 

pretender fell, Romulus Augustulus was spared. He was 
made to abdicate in legal form; and the Roman Senate 
at the dictation of Odoacer, officially signified to the 



A. D. 476. Atigustulus^ Last Western Emperor. 29 

Eastern emperor, Zeno, their resolution that the separate 
Western Empire should cease, and their recognition of 
the one emperor at Constantinople, who should be su- 
preme over West and East. Amid the ruin of the em- 
pire and the state, the dethroned emperor passed his 
days, in such luxurious ease as the times allowed, at the 
Villa of LucuUus at Misenum; and Odoacer, taking the 
Teutonic title of king, sent to the emperor at Constanti- 
nople the imperial crown and robe which were to be 
worn no more at Rome or Ravenna for more than three 
hundred years. 

Thus in the year 476 ended the Roman empire, or 
rather, the line of Roman emperors, in the West. Thus 

it had become clear that the foundations of ^ , ^^ 

End of Em- 
human life and society, which had seemed pire in the 

. West. 

under the first emperors eternal, had given 
way. The Roman empire was not the ^last word' in the 
history of the world ; but either the world was in danger 
of falling into chaos, or else new forms of life were yet to 
appear, new ideas of government and national existence 
were to struggle with the old for the mastery. 

The Avorld was not falling into chaos. Europe, which 
seemed to have lost its guidance and its hope of civiliza- 
tion in losing the empire, was on the threshold of a his- 
tory far grander than that of Rom.e, and was about to 
start in a career of civilization to which that of Rome 
was rude and unprogressive. In the great break-up of 
the empire in the West, some parts of its system lasted, 
others disappeared. What lasted was the idea of muni- 
cipal government, the Christian Church, the obstinate 
evil of slavery. What disappeared was the central pow- 
er, the imperial and universal Roman citizenship, the 
exclusive rule of the Roman law, the old Roman pagan- 
ism, the Roman administration, the Roman schools oi 



30 Beginning of the Middle Ages. A. D. 476. 

literature. Part of these revived ; the idea of central 
power under Charles the Great, and Otto his great succes- 
sor ; the appreciation of law, though not exclusively Ro- 
man law ; the schools of learning. And under these 
conditions the new nations — some of mixed races, as in 
France, Spain, and Italy; others simple and homoge- 
neous, as in Germany, England, and the Scandinavian 
peninsula — began their apprenticeship of civilization. 
But the time of preparation was long. The world had 
long to wait for the ripening of the seed which was so 
widely sown, and which was in due season to bear such 
rich fruit. In the first five centuries after Western Eu- 
rope had passed from Roman to barbarian rule, two 
great stages are perceptible in the course of events. In 
the first stage, we see the confusion and disturbance at- 
tending on the new settlement, which everywhere took 
the shape of invasion ; but the materials were being 
gathered and made ready to form the new society which 
was to arise. In the second stage, we see the attempts 
to organize these materials, to give distinctness to the 
different forms of national life, to introduce order, law, 
and fixed constitutional habits in the new nations, at- 
tempts which culminated in the revived empire of 
Charles the Great. To trace the course of European his- 
tory through these two stages is the object of the follow- 
ing sketch . 



CHAPTER II. 



THE TWO NATIONS. 

The disappearance of the emperors of the West did not 
mean the complete and immediate disappearance of the 
laws, ideas, and political organization of the Roman 



A. D. 476. The New Nations. 31 

empire in Europe. These went on, for a time, in ap- 
pearance almost unchanged, and it was only by degrees 
and by successive shocks, that the old order gave place 
to the new one, which was now beginning. 
Odoacer was the most powerful man in kingdom In 
Italy, without even a nominal rival. But ^^^}'^\ subordi- 

•^ ' nate to the 

Odoacer was not emperor. He was only a tmpire. 
Teutonic king, without even a special and 
national, much less a territorial' title. He was a "king 
of nations," of a mixed army, among whom he had 
divided the third part of the lands of Italy; while to the 
Italians he was the Roman "Patrician," appointed by 
the distant emperor at Constantinople over the "dio- 
cese " of Italy. The name and place of emperor were 
void in the West. But there never was a time, from 476 
to 800, when the Roman empire was supposed not to 
exist. There was still for some time the Roman Senate, 
the Roman Consulship, the Roman Praetorian prefect ; 
the Roman municipal and financial administration, the 
Roman law, by which life was ruled, when this law did 
not come into conflict with the policy, the usages, the 
will of the new masters. And though there was no 
longer an emperor in the West, there was still a Roman 
emperor, the emperor who ruled at Constantinople, the 
greatest and most majestic personage in the world, who, 
though far off, and busily occupied with affairs of his 
own, had not relinquished his claims to recognition and 
allegiance in the West, and continued to assert them, 
sometimes with strength and success. But though at 
the time the greatness of the change was obscured by 
the stubborn tenacity of many surviving parts of the 
strong Roman organization, the old imperial system had 
really passed away, and the new national system, which 
was henceforth to prevail in Europe, had come into ex- 



32 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 476. 

istence. The empire had begun to giv^e place to a num- 
ber of new kingdoms, or attempted kingdoms, which, 
though they sometimes sought a formal recognition from 
Constantinople, had no longer to reckon seriously w'th 
the central authority, but only with one another, for 
their limits and power. When they encountered, as 
they did sometimes with fatal result, the forces of the 
Eastern empire, the barbarians were no longer the inva- 
ders but the invaded, protecting what had become their 
own from a foreign foe, not really resisting the authority 
or encroaching on the dominions of the successors of 
the Caesars. 

In the hundred years which follovv'cd the fall of the 
empire, years of wild confusion and havoc, amid which 
^ are seen the first efforts after reorganization 

Iwo great . 

questi ns, and Order, two great questions emerge and 

afier fall of the ... , . . ^ ■ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

Western em- givc mtcrcst to a sccnc HI which we should 
i^^Rivairv be- Otherwise see nothing but the shock of con- 
tween Gothic flictmg barbarisms. One was the question 

ar.d Frank * . ^ 

races. whicli of thc two great Teutonic races, the 

Catholic creed Goths, or their rivals, the Franks, should be 
2nd Aria^ism. ^.^^^ ruling racc of the West. The other, de- 
pendent on the first, was, which should be the creed 
of Europe, the Catholic faith, or Arianism. In the deci- 
sion of these two questions so eventful and so critical, 
the whole significance of the history centres. 

Odoacer, the chief of an army composed of several 
Teutonic races, was, in fact, though not in name, the 
first king of Italy. But in him thc barbarian chieftain 
hardly rose above the level of a successful soldier; the 
qualities of a statesman first showed themselves in his 
conqueror and successor, the famous Theoderic. Theo- 
deric was the hereditary chieftain of a tribe of the 
Eastern Goths, whom the' easy success and prosperity 



A. D. 493-526. Gothic Kingdom in Italy. -^Z 

cf Odoacer tempted from their wasted seats 

, , ,^ , T • , 1 • 1 Theoderic 

by the UanuDe, to dispute with' him the ihe tast 
great prize of Italy. The Gothic race had founJer^of a 
the start of all the barbarians in culture, in Teutonic 

' state in 

apparent aptitude for civil life, in gentleness Italy. 
of manners. They had been longer than any 
others established in portions of the provinces, as allies 
and subjects of the state ; and it might have seemed that 
of all they were most adapted to reinvigorate and restore, 
without destroying, what had become degenerate and 
enfeebled. Theoderic added to the daring and energy 
of a Gothic chief the knowledge gained by a civilized 
education at Constantinople. He was the head, not of a 
chance army of mixed races, but of a homogeneous tribe 
which reverenced in his family, the race of the Amals, a 
royal line. And he was the first of the Teutonic conque- 
rors who attempted to carry out the idea not merely of 
administering a conquest, but of founding and governing 
a state. His distinct policy was to unite Goths and Ital- 
ians into one people, without breaking down the customs 
or the special privileges of either. If Goths were his 
soldiers, Latins were his counsellors and 
administrators; and he chose these among :^^^l^ '"^' 
the best and ablest of the Latins, men like Symmachus, 
Boethius, Symmachus, and Cassiodorus. Cassi doms 
Theoderic fixed his royal residence some- 
times at Verona, but mainly at Ravenna, the capital of 
the last Western emperors since Honorius. The first of 
the Teutonic kings, he caught from the Romans their 
taste for that great art in which the Teutonic family was 
in time to become so famous, and which was to preserve 
the Gothic name when the Gothic nations had disap- 
peared. In the churches which he built at Ravenna, in 
his palace; -in his tomb, he emulated the. massive gran- 



34 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 413-534. 

deur of the Roman builders. The kingdom of Theode- 
ric, of which the seat was in Italy, while its more loosely 
governed borderlands stretched from Gaul to the Dan- 
ube, exercised a new and commanding influence in the 
group of Teutonic States which were growing up in the 
West. In Theoderic we have, perhaps, the first exam- 
ple of a definite policy of domestic alliances for public 
ends. He connected his house with all the German 
kings of the West, West Goths, Burgundians, Franks, 
Vandals, Thuringians. We have a curious and instruC' 
tive picture of the internal administration of the new 
Gothic kingdom, in its various departments, preserved 
in a large collection of the business letters of Cassiodo- 
rus, Theoderic's Latin secretary and minister. Theode- 
ric's reign of thirty-three years, stained though it was at 
its close by strange outbreaks of suspicious cruelty, was 
the first example of a real effort on a large scale, made 
by the Teutonic conquerors, to pass from barbarism to 
civilization, to create, out of their conquests, " a father- 
land, a city, and a state.'' It was an attempt to give 
body and form, however rudely and imperfectly, to the 
new idea of a Christian kingdom and country, which 
was to supplant the idea which had hitherto held ex- 
clusive possession of men's minds, that of the Roman 
empire. 

In the other Teutonic kingdoms which had come into 
existence in the fifth century, though in none of them 
was seen the statesmanship and large attempts of Theo- 
deric, the same tendency was at work towards distinct- 
ness and consolidation. Gundobad (491-516), the Bur- 
gundian refugee in Ricimer's camp, whom a strange 
Burgundian chancc had once invested with the power of 
kingdom. giving an emperor to the West, had, after 

bloody domestic quarrels, returned to intro- 



A. D. 400-500. Wes/ Gothic Kingdom i7i Gaul. 35 

duce some kind of law and order in his kingdom on the 
Rhone and Saone. The Vandal kingdom in Africa, 
founded, and so long sustained, by the craf- 
ty and relentless policy of Genseric, still kingdom, 
retained the impress given to it by its found- '^^^ ^^^' 
er, in being the most oppressive to the Roman population 
of all the barbarian kingdoms, and by being least influ- 
enced by their civilization. The kingdom of the West- 
ern Goths, the people of Alaric, settled in 
Spain and Aquitaine, with Toulouse and West Gothic 

^ . . . kingdom 

Bordeaux for their capitals, had grown in in Gaul, 
power and extent during the last disasters of 
the empire. One of the last acts of the imperial govern- 
ment, in the very agony of its dissolution, was to sur- 
render to the Gothic king, Euric,the volcanic 
hisfhlands of Auvcrgne, the last refuge in ?y Nepos, 

. . 11 474' 

the midst of his dominions of Latin culture 
and independence. Euric ruled over the greater part of 
southern Gaul and a part of Spain, and in 
renown and pretensions, and in a measure, ^ ^ ^ 

too, in his attempts to adjust, by definite law, the rela- 
tions of conquerors and conquered, was a counterpart, 
though an imperfect one, of the great king who was to 
create the sister kingdom of the East Goths at Ravenna. 
These were all Gothic kingdoms, or were connected 
with the Gothic migration and settlement; and to the 
Gothic race, on the extinction of the empire, the inheri- 
tance of its power seemed to have fallen. And besides 
the tie of race and neighbourhood, these first founders 
of the nations of the West and South, who had not only 
broken up the Roman empire, but had parcelled it out 
as colonists and settlers, were also bound together by 
the tie of religion. Goths, Burgundians, Vandals, were 
already Christians, when they conquered and divided the 



;^6 Begifining of the Middle Ages. a. d. 400-500. 

lands of the empire. They had mostly been converted 
beyond tho limits of the Western empire; and they car- 
ried with them their own bishops, and their Gothic Bible, 
^.^. the translation of Ulfila (310-380), the oldest 

written literature in any Teutonic tonjue. 
But they had been converted and had received their 
Christianity on the borders of the Greek provinces of 

the empire, at a time when the court religion 
Arianism of ^x Constantinople, under Constantius, was 

the (joths. i 

Arianism (337-361). The earliest Teutonic 
kingdoms of Christendom were Arian, either tolerant, as 
under Theoderic, or systematically and unsparingly per- 
secuting, as with the Vandals, and sometimes the West 
Goths. In either case, they were attached to their creed, 
if only as a national distinction from the Roman popula- 
tion. In these Gothic kingdoms, not only new political 
powers were forming, but a new religious power, the ri- 
val of the Catholic Church, was making its appearance 
in the West. This new religious power, Arianism, came 
into conflict, with religious beliefs which had already 
taken the firmest hold on the Latin population in the 
West and in Africa, and it threatened whatever was 
deepest and most cherished in their convictions. But 
this Gothic supremacy was soon challenged. While 
their Arian creed placed them in permanent opposition 
to the Catholic bishops, who, in the break up of the 
empire, had become the real leaders of the Latin popula- 
tion, other Teutonic tribes, later in the race of conquest, 
fresh from their old habits of savage war, and still re- 
taining their heathen religion and their untamed ferocity, 
came into the field to claim their part in the spoils of the 
empire. In the revolutions which followed, it was no 
longer simply the Latin race against the Teutonic, but 
different members of -the Teutonic stock against one 



A. D. 481-5 1 1. The Franks. Cloiis. ^'j 

another. And to the rivahy and feuds of races, nearly 
aUied, but strongly opposed in interests and habits, was 
added also the opposition of creeds. 

A race, not new to the wars and troubles of the later 
empire, was rising into importance in the north-east of 
Gaul, which was to dispute, and finally overthrow, the 
predominance of the Goths, and give a different turn to 
the course of Western history. This race, 
the Franks, was also a Teutonic one. Up 
to the middle of the century, they had made com- 
paratively but little figure in the events of the time. 
They had been loyal to the empire, they had furnished 
some of the best soldiers to the armies of Stilicho and 
Aetius ; they had suffered in the rush and pressure of 
the invading Vandals, and still more of the Huns ; but 
when the empire could no longer defend itself, they had 
not thought it necessary to keep within their earlier 
limits. The Salian Franks had pushed down from the 
Batavian and Frisian marshes, to the rivers and valleys 
of north-eastern Gaul. The Ripuarian Franks advanced 
to the country of the Meuse and Moselle. The Salian 
Franks had even associated a Roman or a Romanized 
Gaul, Aegidius, with their native chief in the leadership 
of the tribe. But in the year 481, the native 
leadership passed into the hands of a chief ' 

who would not endure a Roman colleague, or the nar- 
row limits within which, in the general turmoil of the 
world, his tribe was cramped. He is known to history 
by the name of Clovis, or Chlodvig, which through many 
transformations, became the later Ludwig and Louis. 
Clovis soon made himself feared as the most ambitious, 
the most unscrupulous, and the most energetic of the 
new Teutonic founders of states. Ten years after the 
fall of the Western empire, seven years before the rise 



;^S Beginning of the Middle Ages. A. d. 481-5 ii. 

of the Gothic kingdom of Theoderic, Clovis challenged 
the Roman Patrician, Syagrius of Soissons, who had 
^ , r^ . succeeded to Aegidius, defeated him in a 

Battle of Sois- . . 

sons, 486. pitched field, at Nogent near Soissons (486), 

EatMeof ^nd finally crushed Latin rivalry in northern 

Toib.ac,496. Q^^^^ -pcn ycars later (496), in another 
famous battle, Tolbiac (Ziilpich), near Cologne, he also 
crushed Teutonic rivalry, and established his supremacy 
over the kindred Alamanni of the Upper Rhine. Then 
he turned himself with bitter hostility against the Gothic 
power in Gaul. The Franks hated the Goths, as the 
ruder and fiercer of the same stock hate those who are a 
degree above them in the arts of peace, and are sup- 
posed to be below them in courage and the pursuits of 
war. There was another cause of antipathy. The Goths 
were zealous Arians ; and Clovis, under the influence of 
his wife Clotildis, the niece of the Burgundian Gundo- 
bad, and in consequence, it is said of a vow made in 
battle at Tolbiac, had received Catholic baptism from St, 
Remigius of Rheims. The Frank king threw his sword 
into the scale against the Arian cause, and became the 
champion and hope of the Catholic population all over 
Gaul. Clovis was victorious. He crippled 
defeated by the Burgundian kingdom (500), which was 
Clovis. 500. finally destroyed by his sons (534). In a 
battle near Poitiers, he broke the power of the West 
Goths in Gaul; he drove them out of Aqui- 
lon, near Poi- taine, leaving them but a narrow slip of 
tie s, 597. coast, to seek their last settlement and rest- 

ing-place in Spain; and when he died, he was recog- 
nized by all the world, by Theoderic, by the Eastern em- 
peror, who honoured him with the title of 
^"' the consulship, as the master of Gaul. Nor 

w?'' his a temporary conquest. The kingdom of the 



A-B. jji'j-^h^. Justinian, Belisarius, Narses, 39 

West Goths and the Burgundians had become the king- 
dom of the Franks. The invaders had at length ar- 
rived, who were to remain. It was decided that the 
Franks, and not the Goths, were to direct the future des- 
tinies of Gaul and Germany, and that the Catholic faith, 
and not Arianism, was to be the religion of these great 
realms. Burgundy, which was half Teutonic, was united 
like the Latin Aquitaine and Provence, to the fortunes 
of the Franks. In Spain only did the Gothic conquest, 
the Gothic power, the Gothic civilization, and for a time, 
the Gothic Arianism, maintain themselves. 

In the middle of the sixth century the Eastern empire, 
under one of the greatest of its rulers, Justi- 
nian, once more put forth its still enormous Ju-tmian. 

• 1 • 11 527-565. 

strength, and mamtamed its unabated 

claims by a revival of military enterprise and prowess, 
not unworthy of the most famous days of Rome. Beli- 
sarius showed that Roman generalship was not extinct. 
By him the Vandal settlement in Africa was broken up 
and destroyed (534). While Theoderic lived, the Gothic 
kingdom of Italy was respected by the emperor ; but 
the discord among the Goths themselves which followed 
his death showed how much the Gothic power in Italy 
had depended on one man. The empire revived its 
claim to the allegiance of Italy. The Gothic chiefs were 
defeated or slain, and the kingdom of Theoderic finally 
overthrown by another of Justinian's victorious generals, 
the Armenian Narses (553). Under these great sol- 
diers it seemed as if the Teutonic settlements in the 
West were about to be rudely shaken. Roman soldiers 
taught their old terrible lessons not merely to the Van- 
dals of Africa and the Goths of Italy, but to the invading 
Alamanni from Germany, and the warlike Franks from 
Gaul (556). In Italy, at least, for fourteen years (553- 



40 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 567 

567), till after Justinian and Belisarius were dead, the 
authority of the Roman empire exercised by N arses 
under the name of the Exarch of Italy, or, as it is somti- 
times called, of Ravenna, was once more established 
and obeyed. And though neither the limits of the Ex- 
archate, nor the power of the Exarch, were afterwards 
what they had been under the first Exarch, Narses, the 
name, which continued for nearly two centuries, desig- 
nated the last remaining territory, with the exception of 
the great Mediterranean islands, and for a time, of some 
portions of Spain, which the Roman emperors could 
claim as their own in the West. 

The conquests of Justinian's generals were brilliant 
but barren triumphs. They were the last efforts of the 
empire in the West, and there was not enough in the 
conditions of its society and government, apart from the 
accidental and personal qualifications of its rulers and 
generals, to sustain them. The course of the Teutonic 
invasions and settlements was interrupted and distuibed, 
— diverted, but not arrested. The victories of Belisa- 
rius and Narses, and the overthrow of the Goths in Italy, 
were immediately followed by the irruptions and con- 
quests of the Lombards. 

The Longobards (softened into the Lombards) were 
the last of the Teutonic invaders who settled in the 

western territories of the Roman Empire. 
Wcls^°"^' They were a German tribe, whom the usual 

causes of barbarian migration had brought 
from the banks of the Oder to the great stream along 
which so many barbarian races and federations had 
halted, and from which they had started on their final 
conquests. On the Danube they had, like the Goths of 
Alaric and Theoderic, met other rival barbarians and 
the powers of the Eastern empire. Like Alaric and 



A. D. 567-775. The Lombards, 41 

Theoderic, Alboin, the adventurous king of the Lom- 
bards, instead of pursuing the course of the feuds, alhan- 
ces, and rivah-ies with his barbarian neighbours, sought 
a new field for his ambition in a reconquest of 
Italy to the Teutonic occupation. The Gothic ^ ^^^" 
kingdom had been finally beaten down and destroyed. 
Belisarius was dead (565). Narses, suspected and super- 
seded, if he did not invite the Lombard invaders, no 
longer commanded the Roman armies, and died about 
the time of the invasion (568). Alboin, with associates 
from many German tribes, attacked, overran, and occu- 
pied a great portion of Italy. Ravenna, and the mari- 
time cities as far as Ancona, with Rome, Naples, and 
Venice, were still preserved to the allegiance of the em- 
peror, and acknowledged the authority of the exarch at 
Ravenna. But the rest of Italy came under the domi- 
nion of the Lombard king; his numerous "dukes," 
almost independent chiefs, seized each his city or large 
territory; the Teutonic ascendency, overthrown in the 
overthrow of the Gothic kingdom, was again established 
in Italy. Lombard kings reigned, legislated, and ad- 
ministered at Pavia, as Theoderic had done at Ravenna 
and Verona; and the kingdom of the Lombards, set up 
in the very home of the Latin race, took for 

two hundred years the place which the ^9^ 55 v 

-' _ 1 _ 568-774. 

Gothic kingdom, founded by the genius of 
Theoderic, had only been able to keep for sixty. 

But Italy was never completely subdued, like Gaul, 
Spain, or Britain. To the last, there were three capitals, 
centres of national feeling and influence. Besides the 
Lombard capital of Pavia, and the Greek capital of Ra- 
venna, there was the Italian capital of Rom e^ nominally 
acknowledging the Greek emperor, but for the most 
part, isolated, and growing under the popes into a sense 



42 B'.-'^hining of the Middle Ages. A. D. 567-774. 

of exceptional independence. The Latin population of 
Italy was more obstinate than those of Gaul and Spain, 
in its aversion to foreigners, and in its national pride. 
The Lombards are said to have been harshest and most 
cruel of the barbarian conquerors of Italy. The Lom- 
bards, as long as they were there, always stronger than 
the Greeks and Italians, were yet never strong enough 
to get the land and the people into their grasp. They 
broke up, soon after Alboin's death, into thirty-six inde- 
pendent dukedoms, mostly in single cities; and though 
the confusion and anarchy resulting from this drove 
them after ten years again to make one of these dukes 
their king, the Lombards failed to establish a settled 
kingdom. They were always less closely connected 
with their subjects, and more loosely united among 
themselves, than their Teutonic neighbours. With Rome, 
preserving the Italian traditions and keeping up Italian 
memories, they continued to be barbarian and oppres- 
sive strangers, as despised as they were hated and feared. 
Not even their conversion from Arianism, under Agilulf 
(590-615), begun under the influence of a religious 
queen like Clotildis and Bertha, the Bavarian Theude- 
linda, and seconded by Pope Gregory the Great, could 
reconcile the two races. There was a semblance of or- 
ganization ; a division into provinces, an Austria and a 
Neustria, as among the Franks, a Tuscia, as in Roman 
times. The Lombard kings collected the "laws of the 
Lombards," and promulgated regulations on the rela- 
tions between Italians and Lombards But the real 
masters were the great Lombard dukes, dukes of Spoleto, 
Benevento, Friuli, who made war among themselves and 
on the king^ and who with the kingharried and torment- 
ed whatever was not in their domain. The Lombard 
history had its romantic adventures, but was void of 



A. D. 400-800. Frotn the Empire to Middle Ages, 43 

political interest or success. There is no sign, even to 
the last, of their hold on Italy. The Lombards gave 
their name permanently to one of the noblest of Italian 
provinces, and they left their mark deeply on the laws, 
the customs, the manners, the familiar names of Italy. 
And in Italy their line of kings bridged over the interval 
from the days of Justinian, Belisarius, and Narses, to 
those of Charles the Great. But the Lombard settle- 
ment in Italy, like the Gothic state of Theoderic, fell 
before a foreign conqueror ; and after having lasted 
longer than the Gothic andV^andal kingdoms, like them, 
it ultimately failed. 

Thus began the newer ages of Western Europe. They 
began in the ruins of the old state of things. The 
change was not a gradual passage, such as is always 
going on in the ordinary course of history. The times 
from the fifth to the eighth century, offer an example of 
a real catastrophe of strange and rare violence in the 
progress Of mankind. On such a scale and with siich 
results it has only happened once. It stands alone, as 
far as we know, among the revolutions and changes, of 
the world. Islam, which was most like it, though it was 
the change of a religion, yet left Asiatic civihzation, and, 
for the most part, the populations of Asia, where it 
found them. Changes as great have been since, but 
they have been gradual. Convulsions almost as terrific 
have also happened ; but they have been partial. But 
then, for more than three centuries, it seems as if the 
world and human society had been hopelessly wrecked, 
without prospect or hope of escape. And what gave to 
this misery additional bitterness, was that there was al- 
ways a considerable number of persons, sufficiently im- 
bued with the ideas and imagination of a happier time, 
to be alive to the contrast, and to feel moie acutely the 



44 Beginfiing of the Middle Ages. a. d. 400-800. 

wretchedness and despair of the present. The language 
of the Psahiis alone adequately represents such feelings: 
" The earth is moved, the hills are carried into the midst 
of the sea. All the foundations of the earth are out of 
course." Just as the present crust of the earth on which 
we dwell is built of the ruins of former ones, as our 
mountains and plains are the remains and wreck of an 
elder world, so nations stand on the relics and survivals 
of older natural and political organizations, broken up 
and shattered, but not annihilated. We plant our corn 
and Avine on the debris of primeval rocks. Ancient sea 
bottoms are our fields, and the sites of our cities. The 
clay ol which our bricks are moulded was poured forth 
in subglacial streams from long melted glaciers. The 
stones of which our homes are built are cut out oi strata 
deposited in oceans which have vanished, and beds 
heaved up and down in tremendous jars and shocks, far 
beyond our experience. So modern Europe has arisen 
out of three main elements : i. Disintegrated and ruined 
nations formed under the civilization of Greece and 
Rome ; 2. Altered, and, to use a geological term, "meta- 
morphic," Teutonic races, more or less modified by con- 
tact with the Roman world; 3. The organization and 
ideas and usages of the Christian Church. With the 
older civilizations of the world, India, Persia, Egypt, v/e 
have to do only indirectly. With the three elements 
present after the destruction of the Roman empire, v/e 
are in immediate relation ; we touch them. 



A. D. 400-800. Teutonic Or^anizaiion. ^2, 



CHAPTER III. 

CONDITION OF THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENTS IN THE 
ROMAN EMPIRE. 

The new settlers brought with them certain outhnes of 
organization. They came for the most part, not merely 
as armies but as tribes; and the tribal cha- 
racter became prominent in proportion as Teutonic or- 

^ ' ganization. 

they settled. They came for the most part 
under kings, sometimes, apparently, of an ancient line, 
like the Amals among the Goths, somiCtimes chosen to 
conduct a war or to reward a conquest. The tribe con- 
sisted of freemen, with their dependents, and in time 
their slaves, though the course of events gradually caused 
changes in the power, the wealth, and the rank of indi- 
viduals; and freedom of person and of vote was long at 
the basis of Teutonic usages, though tempered by limit- 
ing customs and by accidental differences of strength 
and influence. They divided the land as they settled, 
either adopting the old divisions, like the Pagns [Pays], 
or the Civitas, with other indeterminate subdivisions in 
Gaul, or creating new ones of their own in the more 
purely Teutonic districts, the Gau, and the Mark in Ger- 
many. And as soon as they were settled, a hierarchy 
of chiefs grew up; Duces, "leaders of the host" [Ueer- 
zog), over the larger provinces, Comites [Graf), over the 
subordinate ones, leaders in war, magistrates in peace. 
The king had his special companions and faithful men. 



4 3 B^'.ginnmg of the Middle Ages. A. D. 400-800. 

out of whom, as well as out of the local chiefs who were 
not dependent on the king, a 'nobility arose. The gath- 
ering once or twice a year of the free men, in the divi- 
sions of the kingdom and in the kingdom as a whole, 
brought them continually together, either to make war, 
or to sanction laws and decisions. And the land was 
partly public, held in common by the inhabitants of the 
district, whether great or small ; partly held in special 
occupation and tenancy from the community, but not 
as property by individual members ; and partly held by 
full right of property, subject or not to claims on it, pub- 
lic or private. In each Teutonic settlement, there were 
the old inhabitants and the new comers. Under varying 
conditions, often in the proportion of two-thirds to one- 
third of land or produce, the original population shared 
the soil with the conquering minority. And for the most 
part conquerors and conquered lived each under their 
ovv'n law. 

But the Teutonic nations, which, in the fifth century, 
had not merely invaded the empire, but had made per- 
manent settlements in it, found themselves under new 
conditions of life. They had exchanged their forests 
and wastes for a land of ancient cities and established 
cultivation, in which they were still, indeed above all 
things, warriors, whose trade and pride was fighting, yet 
no longer mere foes and destroyers, but settlers, or, as 
it was said, ** guests." The Germans, with all their bar- 
barian rudeness and wildness, were not, like the Huns, 
and the Turks afterwards, hopelessly alien in mind and 
spirit from the Romans whom they had conquered. 
They had also become more or less familiar with the 
more civilized races for whom, in the trial of strength, 
they had been too strong. Some of the German tribes, 
especially those of the Gothic stock, had come into con- 



A.D, 400-800. Influence of Chu7-ch on New Nations. 47 

stant contact with the Romans, as soldiers in the impe- 
rial service, and sometimes in the court ; and further, 
most of these Gothic tribes had listened to the teachers 
and missionaries of Christianity, and had, in a partial 
and imperfect way, received it as their religion. 

When, therefore, they founded their new kingdoms 
in Gaul, in Spain, in Italy, the things about them were 
not absolutely strange to them. Still, when 
the time of comparative repose succeeded seuiements af- 
the excitement of conquering and of taking fected by three 

*• ° new( onditions 

possession, the conquerors found themselves in the life of 
under altered conditions of life. They found nations, 
themselves continually in the presence of 
three new sets of circumstances, which were from day to 
day impressing their minds, forcing on them new ideas, 
affecting their actions, favouring or interfering with their 
purposes ; and these, whether resisted or welcomed, were 
insensibly subjecting them to processes of change, gra- 
dual, prolonged, and sometimes intermitting, but very 
deep and very eventful. These changes were the be- 
ginnings, out of which by long waiting and painful steps 
and dreary reactions of anarchy and darkness, the new 
and progressive civilization of the European nations was 
to spring. 

The first of these influences was, the presence of the 
Christian Church ; the second, was the pre- 
sence of Roman law and its administrative religion!"^^ ° 
system ; the third, was the atmosphere of ^- ^^'•^• 

•' ' ' ... 3- ■Language. 

Latin language and conversation in which 

they lived, and its rivalries with their own Teutonic 

speech. 

I. At the period of the Teutonic settlement, the Chris- 
tion religion was rooted in the Latin world, and the 
Christian Church had insensibly attracted to itself the 



48 Beginning of tJie Middle Ages. a. d. 400-800. 

p . . , authority with which men spontaneously in- 
the Church vest that which they reverence and trust 

at the time r^, , , . ^ • ^ 

oftheseule- -«■ he moral and. social power, which was 
"^^"'' slowly but surely slipping out of the hands 

of the empire, and even some measure of the political 
power which its officials were abdicating, was passing 
over to the chiefs of the religious society 
"^^^,_^\"^' which the empire had vainly combated, the 

tian bishops. ^ •' ' 

Christian bishops. Amid the ruins of the 
greatest pride and the greatest strength that the world 
had known, the Church alone stood erect and strong. In 
days when men relied only on force and violence, yet 
only to discover, time after time, that force alone could 
not give and secure power, the Church ruled by the 
word of persuasion, by example, by ]s:nowledge, by its 
higher view of life, by its obstinate hopes and visible 
beneficence, by its confidence in innocence, by its call 
to peace. The Church had faith in itself and its mission 
where all other faith had broken down. It might be 
afflicted and troubled by the disasters of the time, but its 
work was never arrested by them nor its courage abated. 
It still offered shelter and relief among the confusion, 
even after war had broken into its sanctuaries, and the 
sword had slaughtered its ministers ; it still persisted in 
holding out the light from heaven, when the air was 
filled with storm and darkness. In the Latin cities of 
Italy and Gaul, while public spirit and the sense of duty 
were failing, and the civil chiefs of society shrank from 
the dangerous burdens and troubles of office, the Chris- 
tian bishops, chosen by their people for qualities which 
men most respect, were, by virtue of these qualities, 
ready to accept the responsibilities which others gave up, 
and were taking informally the first place. It added to 
their influence that they were permanent in their ouice, 



A. D, 400-800. Christian Bishops. 49 

and some of the most remarkable of them held it for a 
very long period, through rapid changes in the world 
without. Aviius, Bishop of Vienne for thirty-five years, 
from 490 to 525, helped to order the Burgundian king- 
dom, and witnessed iis fall. CiEsirius of Aries, in his 
forty years' episcopate (501-542), saw the power of 
the West pass from the Goths to the Franks, and 
the Gothic kingdom built up by Theoderic in Italy, 
overthrown by Belisarius; and both C^sarius and Avitus 
exercised great influence on the new society and its new 
masters. Remigius, who in 496, baptized Clovis and his 
Franks, in his episcopate of more than seventy years 
(461-533), saw the last days of the Western empire, and 
the victorious beginnings of the Merovingian line. In 
tinies of strife the bishops were mediators, ambassadors, 
peace-makers. In times of imminent danger men looked 
to them to face the peril, to intercede for the doomed, to 
cross, with no protection but their sacred character, the 
path of the destroyer. With the terrible and inflexible 
barbarians, who were deaf to Roman envoys and con- 
temptuous of Roman soldiers, with Ricimer, with Alaric, 
with Attila, with Genseric, the last word, the only word 
listened to, was that of a fearless bishop, like Pope Leo, 
asking nothing for himself, but in the name of the Most 
High that his people should be spared. Representatives, 
not of religion only and the claims of God, but of moral 
order, of the rights of conscience and the sympathies 
of men, of the bonds and authority of human society, 
the Christian bishops were, when the barbarians be- 
came settlers in the empire, the only trusted guides of 
life. 

Besides these majestic and commanding forms which 
were continually meeting the nev/ comers, in questions 
of peace and war, in council, in the intercourse of civil 



5© Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 400-800. 

life, as ministers of peace, justice, and self- 
The religion control, there were also the influence and 

Itself. 

the results of the religion which they pro- 
fessed. It was a religion which allied the most over- 
whelming wonders and mysteries with the plainest and 
most uncompromising rules of action ; which, to the in- 
quisitive, opened thoughts undreamt of concerning the 
love, the greatness, the terrors of an unknown God, and 
Avhich taught men to be daring, heroic, and enduring, 
in the new way of severity to themselves, and boundless 
kindness and service to others. The barbarians coveted 
Roman wealth, they despised Roman strength ; but 
these bold and manly race$ could not be awed by what 
the Christian Church had saved and incorporated of 
ancient Roman force and greatness of mind, heightened 
by the spirit of a Divine teaching and purity, in her 
charity, her discipline, her self-devotion and public spirit. 
And this was embodied in a compact and steady organ- 
ization, which, while all else was reeling and changing, 
showed the world the strange spectacle of stability and 
growth. Barbarian chiefs, like Clovis the Frank, or 
Gundobad the Burgundian, dimly understood the spec- 
tacle before them, and the influences which acted on 
them ; and, doubtless, the spectacle was a confused one, 
and the influences were mixed ones. But it was plain to 
them, in that rude and wild time, that whatever there 
was on earth stronger than force and greater than kings, 
was in that Kingdom of Righteousness which the Chris- 
tian Church proclaimed, and attempted to reflect. Way- 
ward and intractable disciples, they broke Ayithout scru- 
ple its laws in their moments of passion, and trampled on 
its most sacred sanctions. Low and high notions were 
grotesquely intermixed in their efforts at duty. But they 
saw clearly and truly that in the Christian Church and 



A. D. 400-800. Effect (Pn the Church itself. 51 

religion they had encountered a power of a different 
order from any that they had yet met with ; a power 
which they niust take account of, which was not afraid 
of them, and would always be in their path; which they 
must either accept and make terms with, or else at all 
hazards resolve to destroy and root out. For the most 
part they chose the former alternative. 

The immense influence of Christianity and the Church 
on the new nations is one of those mixed and complica- 
ted facts which it is hard adequately to ex- 
hibit, much less to analyze completely. It ihe^piaure^; 
was the source of £:ood and the guarantee detenora- 

*=" ° _ ting enect on 

of progress to them; it carried with it the the Church 
promise and hope of a nobler future. But 
the immediate effect of this contact of the barbarians 
with Christianity was to lower arjd injure Christianity. 
Christianity raised them, but it suffered itself in the effort. 
The clergy, and those responsible for the care of religion, 
in rude and disordered states of society, are often hardly 
judged by those who live later in calmer and more ex- 
perienced times. During the worst of the wild days 
which followed the Teutonic conquest, there were always 
to be found men deeply impressed with the sense of 
right, and with the truth and greatness of the Divine 
government, full of zeal for righteousness, and disinter- 
ested love for their brethren ; men who taught these 
lessons, and men who received them in sincerity. So- 
cially, the Church, as such, was always on the side of 
peace, on the side of industry, on the side of purity, on 
the side of liberty for the slave and protection for the 
oppressed. The monasteries were the only keepers of 
literary tradition ; they were, still more, great agricul- 
tural-colonies, clearing the wastes, and setting the ex- 
ample of improvement. They were the only seats of 



52 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 400-800. 

human labor which could hope to be spared in those 
lands of perpetual war. In the religious teaching of the 
clergy, the great outlines and facts of this Christian 
creed were strongly and firmly drawn, and they were 
never obhteratcd, though often confused by lower and 
meaner admixtures, it was impossible to forget the 
Cross of Christ ; the appeal to Our Father went up in 
numberless tongues and dialects all over the West, from 
the ignorant and the miserable, from the barbarian war- 
rior, and perhaps his victim. But the religious aspect 
of the West was to be, for many centuries after the con- 
quest, a dark and deplorable one. From the moment 
that the barbarians became masters in the West, an im- 
mediate deterioration becomes manifest m the clergy, in 
their teaching, in their standard of conduct. There is a 
vast change from the generation of Churchmen in Gaul 
who had felt the influence of the powerful writers and 
earnest teachers of the fourth and fifth centuries — St. 
Hilary, St. Jerome, St. Leo, above all St. Augustine, and 
St. Augustine's strong and subtle antagonists, Faustus 
. ^ and Pelagius. Even from men like Prosper 

Prosper, f 463. . ■^ ^ 

Avitus,t525. of Aquitaine, Avitus of Vienne, Csesarius of 

Csesarius.f 542. * i 1 1 • 1 

Aries, the descent is great to the next gene- 
ration in the sixth century, with their coarse and superfi- 
cial religion, their readiness to allow sin to buy itself off 
by prodigal gifts, the connivance by the best men at im- 
posture, its direct encouragement by the average. In the 
Church in Gaul under the Franks, of which Gregory of 
Tours (540-595) has left so curious a contemporary pic- 
ture, the hold of discipline on the people is seen to be 
of the slightest, the irregularity of all acts among the 
clergy is of the greatest. And these evils increased as 
the bishops increased in dignity and wealth. The 
breadth of land held and tilled by the clergy was a ben- 



A. D. 400-800. Contact with Roman Law. 53 

efit to the country, but not to themselves. Their secu- 
larity and wide-spread corruption were the heavy price 
at which their hold on the barbarians, the only visible 
hope for the ultimate improvement of society, was pur- 
chased. 

2. Further, the Teutonic settlers found themselves in 
the midst of a population long accustomed to the elabo- 
rate and fully developed system of Roman 
law, which had grown up out of the varied otThe*^* 
experience and the practised forethought of barbarians 

'■ '^ . " with ho . an 

a great people, and which provided natu- law and ad- 

,, , Mr 1 11 minisiraiion. 

rally and easily for the numberless ques- 
tions of human life and intercourse. It is clear that 
Roman law greatly impressed them. They had brought 
with them their own unwritten customs from the other 
side of the Rhine, or from the banks of the Danube, 
according to which the rough Justice of a rude and 
inartificial state of society was administered. Each tribe 
had its own customs; and earlier or later after the settle- 
ment, in some cases very early, these customs, ex- 
pressed in Latin, were reduced to writing, and became, 
in contrast to the general Roman law, the peculiar law 
of each tribe or kingdom — the "law" of the Burgun- 
dians, Visigoths, Salian and Ripuarian Franks, Ala- 
manni, Bavarians, Lombards. These were at first rude 
attempts, mainly lists of offences and penalties, the 
penalties being for the most part money fines or com- 
pensations, according to the nationality or social rank 
of the injured person. But they expressly recognized 
for the Roman population, that is, for the larger part of 
the population, the Roman law. Some of the Teutonic 
kings, as Alaric, the West Goth (506), and Sigismund, 
the Burgundian (517), republished and resanctioned the 
Theodosian code, or selections from it, for the guidance 



54 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 400-800. 

of their Roman subjects. The next step was to incorpo- 
rate in their own laws, as fresh cases arose and new 
questions had to be adjusted, provisions adopted from 
the Roman law. The great Theoderic, the East Goth, 
about 500, drew up, by the help of his Latin counsellors, 
his Edictuin, in which, borrowing from Roman princi- 
ples of law, he laid down rules for barbarians and Ro- 
mans alike, intended to teach respect for right and order, 
to protect the weak against the strong, and to guard the 
civilization [civilitas) which he so valued. And, finally, 
as in the law of the West Goths, (642-701), after they 
were confined to Spain, the two elements, Teutonic and 
Roman, were fused together into one general code of 
ti7'ritorial instead oi pL:7'sonal law, for a nation in which 
Goths and Romans had come to be looked upon as one 
people. Even while the special customs of each tribe 
were defined and maintained, there was yet always the 
consciousness of a larger and more universal law all 
round them — the vast system of laws, decrees, and judi- 
cial decisions which came down from the republic and 
the empire, and which, compared with the local laws 
of Franks or Goths, seemed like the general law of the 
world, as contrasted with the by-laws of some local 
association. This vast scientific apparatus of jurispru- 
dence was in the hands of the Latins, understood by 
them, still worked and administered by them, accom- 
plishing ends which the rough barbarian rules could 
not reach. The Teutonic settlers without fully under- 
standing the great instrument, were able to appreciate 
its power and advantages. Latin clerks put their Teu- 
tonic customs into the universal language. Latin ex- 
perts interpreted to their kings the Roman codes. In 
Spain Latin-speaking bishops, in the councils of Toledo, 
compiled and arranged the law of the West Goths. 



A.D. 400-500. The Ba7-banans and Roman Law. 55 

In the north, under the Franks, the Roman municipal 
system, v/ith its magistrates and its forms, continued 
to act, only adjusted to a state of things in which the 
Teutonic count or bishop took the place of imperial 
presidents or consulars ; and the close Latin muni- 
cipality gradually pi^ssed into a more popular bod}^, 
which was to become the "commune," the "common- 
alty," of later times. In proportion as the Germans 
settled down to theconditionsofcivillife, bought and sold, 
built and planted, claimed rights or disputed them, 
made wills and inherited property, they came upon the 
Roman civil order, waiting for them ready made in all 
questions, with its strong principles and established 
rules. They found themselves, as Guizot expresses it, 
"caught in its meshes." Its influence varied greatly; 
but its traces are seen everywhere. And it was one of 
the chief means by which, in the union of the two races 
in the West and South, the Latin element gained more 
and more the ascendency. 

3. Again, all these I'eutonic settlers, Goths, Burgun- 
dians, Franks, Lombards, found themselves in daily 
contact in the business of life with a Latin- 
speaking population, the leaders of which the"Teu°onic 
were more cultivated, and the inferior "^t'onswnh 

' l.a m popu- 

classes more numerous than themselves, lat on, more 

1171 1 ,- ,1 . . numerous 

Whether as masters or as fellow-citizens, and more 
whether profiting by Latin knowledge, or ^"^"^^t^^- 
employing the labour of their new dependents and 
slaves, thev were forced to know something of Latin ; 
not, of course, the literary Latin which we have in 
books, even in the books of the time, but the Latin 
spoken in daily life, as it must have existed even in the 
days of Cicero and Virgil, — the Latin spoken by the 
humble, coarse, and ignorant ; the Latin of soldiers, hus- 



56 Beginning of iJie Middle Ages. a. d 400-Soo. 

bandmen, mechanics, foreign slaves, with its vulgaf 
idioms and pronunciation varying in different locahties, 
and with its varying admixtures of rude and outlandish 
expressions. The new masters could not deal with their 
woodsmen, their carpenters, their masons, on their posses- 
sions, without acquaintance with the provincial dialect in 
which the Latin of common life happened to be spoken 
on the spot. And whenever they had need of learning, — • 
political, legal, or ecclesiastical, in the services of the 
Church, in the courts, or in the lawyer's office — they found 
that learning had not attempted, and was hardly able, to 
speak in any other than the imperial speech of Rome. 
There was not yet strength enough in the German dia- 
lects, still reputed barbarous even by those who used 
them, to break the prescription of custom in favour of 
Latin, in business, in diplomacy, in all solemn and for- 
mal transactions. Their ancient speech, among Franks 
and Goths, remained the cherished sign of a conquering 
and dominant race. It was the language of the nursery 
and of the family, as long as the family kept itself Teu- 
tonic; it would have the preference in easy and intimate 
intercourse, as long as the boast of ancestry and blood 
remained in the court, or in the service of the court. 
But, besides that Franks and Goths, by degrees, mar- 
ried Latin wives — Gallic, Italian, Spanish — it was more 
and more the case that if the imported Teutonic was the 
language of predilection, the local Latin was the lan- 
guage of necessity and convenience. When one of the 
conquering race wanted to show temper or inflict insult, 
he might say that he did not understand Latin ; but he 
was in reality far too shrewd and too wise to cut himself 
off from what he knew to be one of his indispensable in- 
struments of power. For centuries, in the lands of the 
Teutonic conquests, two languages went on side by side, 



A. D. 400-Soo. Laiinizwg of TeiUonic Nations. 57 

in proportions varying in different districts and different 
orders of society. Each acted on the other; but each 
remained distinct, borrowing words, or even forms, but 
keeping its own fundamental structure and elements. 
Where Goths, Franks, Lombards settled, the population 
must have been, in parts of it at least, more or less, bi- 
lingual. Two languages were in use, running a race for 
the mastery, as now in Wales and in Brittany, in many 
cantons of Switzerland, in parts of the United States and 
Canada, in Hungary and Bohemia, and in India ; till, at 
last, convenience, policy, accident, gave one or other 
the victory. So, unperceived at the time and silent, the 
struggle went on between the Teutonic and Latin lan- 
guages. The Teutonic had on its side the pride, not 
merely of rank, but of race and blood. On the ether 
hand, the Latin had three advantages. It had numbers ; 
it had, what the Teutonic had not yet, a written litera- 
ture ; and it had the Church, with its services, its schools, 
its legal forms, and its clerks. And, in a large portion 
of the Teutonic conquests, these were decisive, though 
the struggle was long. The end has been that victory has 
remained with the Latin, and its derivative languages, 
in the west and south of the continent of Europe. 

Thus, under influences such as these, helping or check- 
ing each other, a new society began to rise out of the 
ruins and fragments of the old. Germans 
and Romans each ceased to be what thev Reriprocai 

actions of all 

had been, to become something new and th sc influ- 
ences ; issuing 
different. The slow and often impercepti- in ihe revival 

ble process of change began which was to mocUfiedlorms 
build up again in many ages the order and °^ \. "" 

r^ ^5 -f ft Civilization. 

Stability of life which in the fall of the Ro- 
man empire seemed to have foundered ; the process 
which, often broken off, often ill-directed, often disap- 



58 Beginning of the Middle Ages. A. D. 400-800. 

pointing in its results, was yet at last to fit the new na- 
tions to take the place of the empire, which their fathers 
had destroyed. And one remarkable feature of the 
change \vas the final prevalence of the Latin element, 
wherever it had originally established itself, over the 
Teutonic. It was steady and certain, how^ever protracted. 
There was a reconquest to Roman habits and sympa- 
thies, — to what a convenient mediaeval word designated 
as Rojnanitas or Latinitas — of the Latin provinces which 
the German conquerors had seized and made their own. 
It is plain that, from the first, no exclusion or principle 
of separation prevailed. The two races early began to 
work together, in war and in political administration ; 
and the Germans were wdlling to employ, even in places 
of high trust, the services w-hich Latins were willing to 
render. In Gaul especially, as far as can be judged 
from names which occur in the history of his times by 
Gregory of Tours, the proportion of Latins to Germans 
among the dukes, counts, patricians, and other officers 
of the Frank kings, especially those connected with the 
revenue, seems to be something more than two to three ; 
among the bishops and clergy, the names and the origin 
are at first almost exclusively Latin, and to the end of 
Gregory's history barbarian names among the high eccle- 
siastics are the exception. The character of the Franks 
as he pourtrays it, lent itself readily to this gradual mix- 
ture and fusion w^ith the Latin provincials. As warriors, 
they were among the most impetuous and formxidable of 
the German invaders. But they were eminently vain- 
glorious, light-minded, unsteady, and self-indulgent; and 
as they passed from the privations of their barbarian life, 
to an abundance and luxury unknown before, they would 
be singularly exposed to the fascinations and flatteries of 
a new form of society which had opened to them such 



A. D. 400-800. Decay of Knowledge and Culture. 59 

new enjoyments. Still it was to be a long time before 
the Franks ceased to be, in spite of Roman influences, a 
Teutonic race. In Spain, the Goths yielded earlier to 
these influences. In Italy, the intrusive German ele» 
ment, more completely alien, and more passionately re- 
sisted, was vanquished or absorbed after the defeat of 
the Lombards. In Gaul, in the provinces south of the 
Loire, studded with great Latin cities, Bordeaux, Tou- 
louse, Lyons, Vienna, Aries, Nismes, with the half Greek 
and half Latin Massilia, the latinizing of the Franks 
went on faster and more completely than to the north of 
that river ; and it went on faster between the Loire and 
the Meuse, than between the Mouse and the Rhine. But 
though the end was a long way off, yet in the end, Gaul 
passed, through many intermediate steps from the 
Franks, the most Teutonic of Teutons, to the professed 
leaders of the Latin race, the chiefs of the " Romance " 
family of nations, the Frc7ich. Rome, which had latin- 
ized her conquered provinces, ultimately latinized also 
her German conquerors. 

But the transformation was a long one, and accom- 
panied with many disasters and many losses. In the 
civil as in the religious order of things, the downfall of 
Latin ascendancy, at the time of the Teutonic conquests, 
was the beginning of a dreary period of confusion, vio- 
lence, and ignorance. While the Franks and Goths 
were learning the rudiments of civilized social life, the 
Latins were losing it from the contact and predominance 
of a ruder people ; and the Latins were losing much 
more than at the time the Germans were gaining. In 
the sixth century, Latin literature, which had recently 
seen a real poet like Claudian, a philosopher like Boe- 
thius, and which scarcely a century before had seemed to 
be reviving in new power and life under the originality 

F 



6o Beginning of the Middle Ages. a, d. 

and the eloquence of Augustine, rapidly sank into a dark- 
ness which was to last for ages. The generation which 
saw the fall of tne empire saw the sudden extinction of 
classical culture, and of all strong intellectual efforts. In 
the wild and turbulent days of the Frank, the Gothic, 
the Lombard kings, men had neither leisure nor heart 
for serious thought and study, much less for 
C. Sollms literary trifling and pastime, such as that 

Apolhnaris _ -^ ^ ^ 

Siuonius which amuscd a student of the Latin class- 

ics, like Sidonius, while Auvergne was quiet 
under the protection of Rome. .What writing there was, 
was for the immediate calls of the day. It was very 
abundant; it was often forcible and genuine; but the 
sense of order and beauty, the care for strength and 
grace, the power of handling language with a mastery 
over its resources, the discrimination of the weight and 
proportion of words, had passed away, along with the 
interest in all the deeper forms of intellectual inquiry 
and enterprise. Gregory of Tours laments quaintly and 
pathetically hi's bad grammar and unskilfulness in writ- 
ing — his false concords and wrong cases. Latin reading 
and writing were practised by none but those to whom 
they were the necessity of their profession, or the road 
to advancement. All but the monastic or cathedral 
schools seem to have disappeared in the barbarian con- 
quest. These guarded the records of literature ; and a 
great deal of composition proceeded from them. But it 
was composition which in its subjects was very mono- 
tonous, confined in range, and meagre in ideas ; while 
in execution, it became more and more coarse and rude, 
and in all but the most direct and primitive forms of 
expression, childishly helpless. There, indeed, in tell- 
in<i some terrible storv, in recording some memorable 
words of deep passion or emotion, it preserved much of 



40o-8oo. Decay of Knowledge and Culture. 6i 

strength and sometimes precision. But in the presence 
of the lawlessness and insecurity of the times, men's 
interest was absorbed by the actual calamities which they 
saw, by the vicissitudes and crimes which surrounded 
and oppressed them. They did not care in such days 
to cultivate the powers and refinements of language, 
and they soon lost what they had inherited of these 
powers and refinements ; they lost, too, with this, the 
generalizing and comparing faculties, the value for ex- 
actness, for proportion, for adequacy of statement. The 
Teutonic conquest was followed by centuries in which 
we see an increasing literary depression, and a universal 
incapacity for efforts of strong and fruitful thought. But 
dark as the times were, they were the beginnings of 
better days ; the preparation for improvement was never 
intermitted. The ancient culture of the classical days 
was gone, with its wisdom, its grandeur, its wickedness. 
It had failed in the trial to lead men to improvement. 
And the new order had not yet begun to know its 
strength and power of growth. The men of the new 
world were, like children in the nursery, in profound 
unconsciousness of what they were, and of what they 
were doing. They thought that they were but living 
from day to day in a world which was growing old and 
perishing. The monks, with their hard labor, and their 
fairy tales of saints, knew not, any more than the rough 
soldiers and lawyers, that they were making their first 
but necessary steps in a great progress. What they did 
was deformed by all kinds of evil and ignorance. But 
there were really good and even great men among them ; 
and the best of them did what they could at a time when 
in the nature of things it was impossible to do much. 
And when we watch their attempts, poor and weak as 
they might be, we are reminded perpetually that, at 
least, they were " faithful in litcle." 



62 Bc^inni.ig of iJic Middle Ages. a. d. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CONQUEST OF BRITAIN BY THE ANGLES AND SAXONS. 

In almost complete contrast with the course of things 
seen in the Teutonic settlements on the continent, was 
the Teutonic conquest of Britain. It was more protract- 
ed and gradual ; it was more thorough and complete ; 
and it was much less affected by the preceding condi- 
tions of life and society in the conquered race. 

The Teutonic conquerors of Britain came by sea. 

This of itself distinguished their invasions 

^'Teutonic from the barbarian invasions of Italy, Gaul, 

settlements ^j^^j Spain, where whole nations, or armies 

on the Con- '■ 

tinent, and as great as what were called nations, moved 

in Britain. . . . ^ 

m vast swarms over the plams ot liurope, 
poured across the Danube and the Rhine, or made their 
way over the Julian and Rhaetian Alps, into the provinces 
of the empire. To Britain they came only in such num- 
bers as could be carried in a few ships of no great size, 
across the North Sea, from the fiords of Scandinavia and 
Denmark, or from the mouths and marshes of the Ger- 
man rivers, the Elbe and the Weser. Instead of a great 
horde led by Alaric orTheoderic, parties and expeditions 
of adventurers, unconnected with one another, seeking 
plunder and the excitement of a freebooter's life rather 
than new homes, visited continually, as they had done 
under the empire, different points of the eastern and 
south-eastern coast of Britain. When favourable cir- 



4oo-8oo. English and Coniiiiental Cofiquests. 63 

cumstances led them to settle, they still only settled in 
small and isolated bodies. Once settled they were fed 
from their original seats. Smaller bands coalesced into 
larger ones, and these again grew into separate king- 
doms, separately pushing their boundaries against the 
Britons, or against one another, sometimes fused together 
sometimes united for a time under the supremacy of one 
of them. But all this took time. The invaders gained 
a new fatherland by a series of sporadic conquests. In 
the long and bitter struggle between English and 
"Welsh," no one battle decided the result of the strife ; 
no one great victory, as so often on the continent, saved 
the land, or delivered it to a new master. 

The conquerors of Britain, the founders of the Eng- 
lish people, came straight across the sea from one small 

corner in the wilderness of nations, where . , 

Anglo- 
three obscure tribes, unheeded at the time Saxon mva- 

when the world was full of the name and ^^° ^^^ "^* 
terror of Goths and Huns, were loosely united in one of 
the leagues common at the time among the barbarians. 
Jutes, Angles, and a tribe of old "Saxons," whose fa- 
thers had moved over Europe from east to west, till they 
were stopped by the broad mouth of the Elbe, and by 
the bleak and dreary shores of the North Sea, had 
learned that the ocean though very terrible, offered a 
useful war-path to the warriors who dared to trust it. Ac- 
cording to our earliest traditions, a band of these rovers, 
hovering about the coast as many other 
bands had for many years done before them, /A^~s^rhr ) 
was invited, amid the anarchy left in Britain 
by the retirement of the Roman legions, to help Roman- 
ized Britons against their wilder kinsfolk. What fol- 
lowed was on a small scale the same as that which so often 
happened on a large one in the empire. From allies 



64 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

the new comers became invaders, and the first invaders 
became masters of Kent. The Enghsh settlers in Kent 
were Jutes. Others from the same region followed. A 

few years later a band of Saxons, in three 
'^^^" ships, we are told, planted themselves on 

the coast of what they made Sussex. Another band in 

five ships landing more to the westward, laid 
^^'^' the foundation of the great kingdom of 

Wessex. On the east coast. Angles and Saxons contin- 
ued to land, to invade, to occupy, from the Thames to 
the Wash, from the Wash to the Humber, from the 
H umber to the Tweed. Then, up the rivers and along 
the Roman roads, the different bands pushed forward into 
the interior from the south coast, and from the east, with 
chequered fortune but with unbated stubbornness. They 
encountered equal stubbornness. The native resistance 
was of that kind which a weaker but tenacious race offers 
to a stronger one ; unobservant of opportunities, slack and 
ineffective at critical moments, but obstinate, difficult to 
extinguish, always ready to revive, and sometimes burst- 
ing out into a series of heroic and victorious exploits. The 
name of king Arthur, whatever historical obscurity hangs 
about it, has left its indelible marks in our national tra- 
ditions. Through continued ill-fortune, with intervals of 
success, but with general failure, this resistance was pro- 
tracted and fierce. But it Was in vain. The advance of 
the tide was low but continuous ; sometimes arrested but 
never retreating ; bit by bit the land was covered ; frag- 
ment by fragment of British territory broke away, and 
was swallowed up in the rising flood, which came not in 
one channel but in many, and from many different sides. 
The first attempts at occupation by the Jutes in Kent 
were, according to the English chronicles, about the 
middle of the fifth century, the years when southern and 



4oo-8oo. English Conquest and Seffltmenf. 65 

central Europe were trembling before the terrible king 
of the Huns. About fifty years later, in the time of The- 
oderic and Clovis, began the West Saxon advance under 
the house of Cerdic from the Hampshire 
harbours. In another half century while 547-. 

■^ Ida in 

Vandals and Goths were falling before the Northum- 
sword of Belisarius, there was an English 
kingdom set up in the north, and English settlements 
on the east coast, and along the rivers which run into 
the North Sea. We see the British boundary driven 
inwards, and forming an irregular semi-circle from the 
Clyde to the Land's End, flanked for a great portion of 
the line by the English settlements on the east, and 
broken into and deeply indented by the encroachments 
of English conquest along the course of the Severn. 
Another fifty years, and the great English kingdom of 
Northumbria emerges under ^thelfrith, 
and the line of the British territories is ^^^' 

again severed and broken up into separate districts. 
Then began the second stage of the great change. 
The converging lines of advance met in the central 
part of the island. The struggle for new ground began 
between the English tribes and kingdoms ; wars for 
dominion were waged by one kingdom against its 
neighbours ; supremacy, more or less wide and undis- 
puted, was won by personal qualities in one king, was 
lost by the want of them in another, was exercised for a 
time, extinguished for a time, transferred from one king- 
dom to another, as each was the more fortunate in its 
men, its circumstances, and its wars. But this continual 
alternation of peace and war among the English king- 
doms, this perpetual trial of strength and this fluctuation 
between subordination and independence, Vv'as the pro- 
cess by which the tribes which had been a loose confe- 



66 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

deracy by the banks of the Eyder and the Elbe, were 
again to become one nation in England. The centre of 
power moved from the north, through the midland, to 
the south ; from Northumbria to Mercia, from Mercia 
tiil it became permanently fixed in Wessex. And by 
that time, three centuries and a half from the first Kent- 
ish inroads, by a progress most irregular and turbulent, 
but never interrupted, the English nation had grown 
into permanent form and character out of the detached 
bands and tribal settlements and petty kingdoms, among 
which the island was parcelled out. It had organized 
institutions, a language, a spirit of its own, which it 
owed to no foreign source. The new people which had 
arisen in the West, and changed Caesar's name of 
Britain to Egbert's England, was, as has been truly 
said, "the one purely German nation that rose upon the 
wreck of Rome." 

But, perhaps, because so slow and gradual, the Eng- 
lish conquest was complete, in a sense in which the 
Teutonic conquests on the mainland were 

Comrlete- / i t i r 

nessofthe not. It was the Complete displacement of 
SaxonCon- 0^6 race by another. How this was done, 
quest. ^g have but imperfect accounts. We have 

no such record as we have of the Gothic wars, in the 
Latin writers, Orosius and Jornandes, in the Greeks, Zo- 
simus, Procopius, and the valuable fragments of reports 
made by Byzantine envoys and officials. We have no 
such almost contemporary record, confused and unsatis- 
factory though it be, as we have of the Prankish conquest 
in Gregory of Tours. But so much is certain that wheieas 
in the fifth century the language of Britain was Celtic, 
with an admixture of Latin in the towns where the Ro- 
manized population was gathered, in the course of two 
hundred years, Celtic had disappeared, and Latin had 



400-Soo. Completeness of the English Conquest. 67 

been introduced afresh. From the Tamar, the Severn, 
and the Tweed, a new language, purely and unmixedly 
Teutonic, in structure, genius, and for the most part in 
its vocabulary, had become the speech of the country ; 
the speech of all freemen ; the speech of all but slaves, 
bondmen, and outlaws ; the speech which gave names, 
if not to the rivers and the hills, or to the great walled 
cities remaining from the Roman times, yet to all the 
present divisions of the land, and to all the new settle- 
ments of men. The English conquerors, unlike the 
Gothic and Frankish ones, had not suffered the old pop- 
ulation to subsist around them. Saxons and Angles, — ■ 
it is the only way in which the result is to be explained — 
carried their conquests to extermination. They slew, 
they reduced to slavery, or they drove off the former in- 
habitants ; they cleared them away, as the Red Indians 
were cleared away in America. No trace of intermixture 
appears between the "Saxon" and the "Welsh,'' who 
hated one another with the deepest and most irreconcila- 
ble hatred. No British names appear among the ser- 
vants of the English kings. No vestiges survived of 
British political or social life. Romanized cities, villas 
which showed the marbles and mosaics of the south, 
Welsh hamlets and hill forts, all perished amid sack, 
fire, and massacre. Some lines of indestructible Roman 
roads, like Watling Street, some massive Roman walls, 
such as the fragments in London, Lincoln, and Caer- 
gwent, some Anglicized Roman names of cities survive, 
to show who were masters of the land before the English 
came. 

The Teutonic conquerors on the continent had long 
been familiar with the Romans whose masters they at 
last became. They admired their civilization, or, at least, 
its fruits. The nearer they came to it the more they 



68 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

were fascinated by its splendour, its orders, its honours; 
. , ^ like Alaric's successor, Athaulf, who be<]:an 

Anglo-Saxon, . ° 

ah.aihen witli the ambition of substituting a Gothic 

oHques . empire for the Roman, and ended by declar- 

ing that this was a dream, and that his highest glory must 
be to restore the Roman empire of law by Gothic valour. 
Moreover, most of them had already received Chris- 
tianity, and were accustomed to hear its lessons in their 
mother-tongue, before they settled in Gaul and Italy. 
The subtle power of civilization enthralled and trans- 
formed them, willing and proud as they were, in spite of 
all their northern sense of high blood, of strength, and 
freedom, to yield to its influences. It was not so in Bri- 
tain. Angles and Saxons, Jutes and Frisians, fresh from 
the sea and pirate life, or from the bleak flats and sand- 
hills of the German or Danish coasts, knew nothing of 
the great civilized empire from which they were sepa- 
rated by the breadth of Europe. They might possibly 
have seen Roman soldiers in the garrisons of the British 
shore. They knew nothing of Roman service, of Roman 
cities, of Roman policy-and law. And they knew noth- 
ing of Roman religion and owned no reverence for it. 
When, therefore, they settled in their new homes, there 
was nothing to enter into competition or conflict with the 
customs, ideas, moral and social rules, which had gov- 
erned them in their old ones. Of all things Latin, as of 
all things British, they made a clean sweep ; it was for- 
eign to them, it was " Welsh," and they would have 
none of it. Other German invaders had bowed before 
the majesty of Christian bishops, and had often, even in 
the storm of an assault or the sack of a captured town, 
respected Christian churches. The English conquerors 
were fiercely heathen, and hated Christianity as the re- 
ligion of those whom it was their work to destroy from 



Political and Religious Training of English. 69 

off the land which was to be the land of the English. 
Clergy and monks perished with their brethren in the 
fury of the invasion, and the planting of the English na- 
tion was the utter destruction of the Christian religion 
within its borders. 

It was under no indirect influences from a subject 
population that the English were to unlearn their ancient 
barbarism. Roman laws, which retained so ^ 

Convers'on 

much of their power on the Continent, did andtivhza- 
nothing here. Out of their own customs, English, 
their own strong and broad notions of right, 
their own spontaneous efforts after a reasonable and 
suitable order of life, unaffected oy foreign schooling or 
by imitation of foreign ways, losing perhaps some of the 
benefits of foreign experience, the chiefs of the new Eng- 
lish kingdoms worked out principles and institutions 
which were to be the foundations of a political organiza- 
tion as solid, as elastic, as enduring as that of Rome. 
And with respect to their religion, they did not take it by 
a kind of contagion from a surrounding and conquered 
race, more instructed and more elevated in its nobler 
specimens, but more corrupted in its average ones. 
England was an untouched field for the teachers of 
Christianity ; its religion had to be begun from the very 
beginning, as in our day among the heathen tribes of 
Africa and New Zealand. The English were converted 
as afterwards the Germans, Scandinavians, and most of 
the Slave races were converted, entirely from without. 
A century and a half had passed, and from adventurers 
and invaders they had become at home in their several 
shares of England, before Christianity appealed to them. 
Its appeal came from many and different quarters. It 
was the appeal almost entirely, not of force, but of per- 
suasion and example, and it gained its hold on them 



70 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

with singular rapidity and power. Augustine, a mission- 
ary ambassador from Gregory the Great, the far-off 
bishop of Rome, the venerable but dimly known person 
who, in religion, answered to the Roman emperor in 
things worldly, won the ear, after hesitation and serious 
thought, of one of the English kings, Ethel- 
bcrt of Kent. In the same corner of the 
island where the heathen invasion had begun, Augustine 
made good a footing in the court and among the people, 
and laid the foundation of the great see of Canterbury, 
destined to be the second see' of the West (597-601). 
Paulinus, another Italian companion of Augustine, 
preached in the north, and in 627 baptized Edwin, the 
powerful king of Northumbria, at York. In the north 
tlie missionaries and teachers came also from the won- 
derful Irish Church, at this time — the sixth and seventh 
centuricG — keeping up its peculiar traditions, cherishing 
learning and a high enthusiasm, in complete isolation 
from the rest of Christendom, and sending forth its mis- 
sionaries far afield, with a spirit unknown elsewhere. It 
sent forth, not only St. Columba (565) to the Picts, and 
St. Aidan to the English Northumbrians (635), but St. 
Columban (593) to the Burgundian Jura, the Helvetian 
Zurich, and the Italian cloisters of Bobbio, St. Gall (614) 
to the Alamans of the lake of Constance, and other less 
known comrades and friends to the lands of the Franks 
and Bavarians, to Glarus and Chur, and the highest 
sources of the Rhine — the apostles at once of the gospel, 
and of settled life, of husbandry and tillage. In the 
great kmgdom of Mercia, with its frequent dependency 
the land of the East Saxons, it was bishops of the school 
of lona and their English disciples who founded and 
built up in the middle of the seventh century the Church. 
The Burgundian Felix (627) preached to the East An- 



5 65 -65 5 • Conversion of England. 71 

glcs. A bishop from Italy, Birinus (635), sent by Pope 
Honorius, converted the Enghsh of Wcsscx. A teacher 
from the north, Wilfrid of York (664-709), was the apos- 
tle of the South Saxons. In the second half of the sev- 
enth century, these separate efforts began to present the 
aspect of an organized unity under the twenty years' 
vigorous rule of Archbishop Theodore (668-690), the 
Greek of Tarsus, who, with his friend Hadrian the Afri- 
can, had been sent from Rome, " the first archbishop," 
says Bede, " whom all the English Church obeyed." 
Like the conquest, the conversion of England spread 
from different independent centres ; the work began 
from them at different times, and went on in different 
ways, and with varying rates of progress, till at last 
boundaries met and became confluent, and the separate 
kingdoms found themselves prepared to be fused into 
one people. And the unity of religion, attained earlier, 
though not without difficulties of its own, than the unity 
of the nation, contributed most powerfully to make 
Northumbrians and Mercians and West Saxons into 
Englishmen. With fluctuations of success and reaction, 
with one great and terrible struggle in the middle of 
England against the new religion, under the Mercian 
king Penda (624-655), the English kingdoms had with- 
in a century after the landing of Augustine, become 
Christian. 

Of this great change and its incidents, a singularly 
curious and interesting account is given in Bede's His- 
tory. The causes of it were of more than ^ 

^ _ Causes or 

one kind ; but in the forefront must, un- the.onver- 
doubtedly, be placed the breadth and great- 
ness of Christian ideas, and the purity, courage, enthusi- 
asm, and indefatigable self-devotion, though not always 
innocent of superstition, of the Christian teachers. Sup- 



72 Beginiiing of the Middle Ages. 

posed miracles, and, alas ! sometimes evidently fraudu- 
lent ones, played their part in recommending the divine 
message. The sanction and authority of chiefs who 
were trusted and honored, doubtless went for much with 
their people. But at bottom it was the teaching itself, 
with the evident truth of much of it, its nobleness, its high 
solemnities, its promises, and the consistency of its teach- 
ers, which conquered to its obedience a people whose 
customs and whose circumstances were strongly against 
it. In England, as abroad, Christianity won its way, not 
merely and not mainly by the support of kings, not 
merely, though, unhappily, in part, by the worse aid of 
superstition and fraud, but because it was a gospel for 
the poor, the slave, the miserable, the ruined, a defiance to 
the proud, a warning to the great, a bridle to the mighty. 
And once received it was received with no half a mind, 
or half-hearted allegiance. The Anglo-Saxon Church 
had its strange anomalies, its deep blots, its repulsive 
features. Like other churches, it had to deal in its course 
both with grave questions and with petty quarrels. Jt 
had its rise and prime and its deep decline. But in its 
best davs it had a straightforward seriousness of convic- 
lion and purpose, and a fire and thoroughness of faith 
among its early converts, which are very much its own. 
Bede, like Gregory of Tours, reflects a state of society 
which is wild, uncontrolled, violent, full of battle and 
death. But the characteristic passages of Bede are pas- 
sages which are full of genuine religious or moral inter- 
est, and which bear the mark of deep feeling and sym- 
pathy in the writer. The characteristic passages of 
Gregory's history of the Franks are tragedies of dark 
and dreadful crime, to which the stories of CEdipus and 
Lear are tame, and they are told with unmoved calmness 
and composure. 



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Supremacy of the Franks in tJu West. ^5 



CHAPTER V. 

SUPREMACY OF THE FRANKS IN THE WEST — THE ME- 
ROVINGIAN KINGS, DESCENDANTS OF CLOVIS — THE 
MAYORS OF THE PALACE — RISE OF THE CAROLINGIAN 
FAMILY. 

At the end of the sixth century, somewhat more than 
a hundred years from the abdication of the last Western 
emperor {476-600), the great change had been accom- 
phshed, by which, in all the western lands occupied by 
the empire, the public prerogatives, and the indirect 
powers of a ruling people, were transferred from the 
Latin to the German race. The Romans in the time of 
the empire had, in a degree unknown in the world be- 
fore, moulded the subject populations to their own like- 
ness and model. They Romanized the whole West, 
more or less. Everywhere as time went on, in increas- 
ing measure, from York to the Columns of Hercules, on 
the Rhone, on the Seine, on the Rhine, even in the val- 
leys of the Alps, their institutions, their laws, their edu- 
cation, their language, their buildings, their monuments, 
at last — when they adopted it — their Christianity, were 
the silent and continuous influences which assimilated 
life and thought and habits to the Italian type, as it had 
been developed by the marvellous history of Rome. It 
is scarcely possible to express the greatness of the change 
produced by the interruption of this process. It was in- 
terrupted by what is called the invasion of the barbarians. 
Barbarians they certainly were, who broke in upon the 



76 Beginning of tJie Middle Ai^cs. A. d. 476-600. 

Roman empire, and destroyed it in the West. But it was 
not because they were barbarians that their victory was 
so fruitful in consequences. It was because they were 
conquerors of a new and special race. It was because it 
was the substitution, temporary in one land, permanent 
in another, of the Teutonic race, one and the same race 
in all its manifold varieties — Goths, Franks, Saxons, 
Angles, Lombards — for the preceding Latin rule and 
supremacy. No greater and more decisive crisis has 
ever happened in the history of the world than the settle- 
ment of the Teutonic peoples in the lands which the 
Latins had filled with their ideas and their language, their 
manners, their spirit, their names, their customs. Nor is 
the importance of this change diminished, because in dO 
many parts the German conquerors were grcady influ- 
enced and at last absorbed by the Romanized population 
amid which they settled. We cannot tell what the course 
of history would have been if the Latins had kept the 
Germans out, in Gaul, in Italy, in Spain, in Britain ; but, 
assuredly, it would have been very different. The trans- 
fer of power in the West, from the Latin race to the Ger- 
man, in the fifth and sixth centuries, constitutes the first 
act of modern history. 

But it was only the first act of a long and troubled 
drama, not even yet played out. The German settle- 
ment took many shapes. In England it was exclusive- 
and homogeneous. In Gaul it was greatly affected by 
the circumstances round it, and it allowed its own dis- 
tinctive features to be by degrees impaired and obliter- 
ated by foreign influences. In Spain it directly aimed at 
a policy of fusion between the two races, under the direc- 
tion of the Church. In Italy, under the Lombards, it 
was throughout uneasy, oppressive, antagonistic, too 
strong not to leave deep impressions, but not strong 



A. D 6co-7oo. Differe7Kes among the New Naiio?is. 77 

enough to master and assimilate the obstinate counter 
element of Latin character in its native home. Teutonic 
institutions and feelings grew more and more vigorous in 
England. In Gaul, after efforts of resistance, German 
France gradually melted into Latin and "Romance" 
France. In Spain, under a " Romance " and Latin lan- 
guage the old feeling and temper of the Goths largely 
survived ; the basis of Spanish character was Teutonic, 
and under the long strain of the national and Christian 
war against the Moors, it issued in that singular mixture 
of strength and weakness, of loftiness and baseness, 
which has so often shown itself in Spanish history. In 
Italy, the Lombard power, though not the Lombard ele- 
ment, after lasting for two centuries, was thrown off as 
the Gothic power had been, but, as in the case of the 
Gothic power, only by foreign aid. In Italy, throughout 
the middle ages, and down to our own time, the Ger- 
mans were never, in the judgment and feeling of the 
Italians, other than what they were at the first — barba- 
rians, whom the Italians were not strong enough to keep 
out; while to the Germans, the Italians never ceased to 
be "Welsh," the Teutonic equivalent for " barbarian " 
or " foreigner." 

Thus at the beginning of the seventh century, the new 
Teutonic settlement appears everywhere established. 
From the empire, as it existed in the East, it had little to 
fear. The emperor at Constantinople was still, in mo- 
ments of convenience or in moods of courtesy, acknow- 
ledged by the Teutonic kings as invested with a majesty 
without rival or peer on earth, the source of honours, 
of legitimate titles, of high dignities, who might still be 
dangerous on the fringe of their dominions, but who was 
too far off, and too busy with troubles of his own, to 
cause disquietude in the West. There was still a certain 



78 BegiJiJiing of the Middle Ages. a. d. 700. 

amount of intercourse with Constantinople. The Lom- 
bards, hated by the Franks, the Greeks, and the popes, 
were assailed by occasional alliances, in which the Frank 
kings intrigued with the emperor, and sometimes over- 
reached him. The real dangers of the new races arose, 
first, from their own intestine discords, and their intracta- 
bleness to order and law ; and, next, from the habits of 
aggression and pillage lingering in the tribes of their 
own blood, who remained in their old seats in Germany 
and on the Danube. 

In England, in the following century, this last danger 
appeared in a most formidable shape. The British race 
Eneland • ■'^^^ been exterminated or crushed into in- 

paitial repe- significance in England. Through fierce 

tition of the ° ^ ° . 

l)l■oc^^sof wars among themselves the separate king- 

qu St : the doms Icamt one another's strength. The 
D.mes. smaller ones became attached to the larger, 

and a tendency to union began, strengthened by the 
strengthening influence of the Church. First, and par- 
tially, under Northumbria, then under Mercia, and at 
last more completely under Wessex, a single kingly 
supremacy embodied the growing fact of the unity, in its 
laws and its fortunes, of the English nation. But then 
the new nation began to suffer from the repetition of the 
process by which it had itself come into being. Just as 
the fathers of the English had come first with a few pirate 
ships, then with more, first only for a summer ravage, 
then to winter in the island ; first only to carry back 
plunder to their eastern homes on the Weser or the Elbe, 
then to settle and gain a new home in England, — as they 
began by making swift inroads into an enemy's country, 
pushing up the rivers with the tide, or scouring the land 
far and wide with troops of horsemen, and ended by be- 
sieging towns, subduing kingdoms, challenging the sub- 



A. D. 484-589. Dafiger to the New Nations. 79 

mission of the Britons, — so came the Danish rovers, 
" vikings," upon England, But the Danish settlement 
never became what the earlier Anglo-Saxon one had 
been. It did not create a new people. The Danes wen 
a footing in England, a large and lasting one. For a 
time they became the masters there, and their princes 
wore the English crown ; but they were too late to found 
a nation. In spite of the tremendous miseries and losses 
of»the Danish invasion, the English people had become 
too strongly constituted to be broken up by it, or even to 
be greatly altered in character and policy. 

In Spain the national history was more tragic. The 
policy of the great Theoderic, of which scarcely a trace 
appears in the sons of Clovis, seems to have 
been continued among the Gothic kings of gre^sTof^the 
Spain. There also, though in a very differ- Gothic 

^ ' & / kingdom. 

ent way from the English, the Goths through 
all the disturbances of the time, were on their way, appar- 
ently with a deliberate aim, to political unity and consti- 
tutional order. After the death of Euric, the conqueror 
and legislator (484), the Gothic power in Gaul fell before 
the Franks, and its main seat was transferred to Spain, 
under a constitutionally elective kingly rule, which, as 
with the Lombards, the chiefs always tried to keep elec- 
tive, and the kings usually but not always, tried to make 
hereditary. But, in contrast with the Lombards in Italy, 
the Gothic kings, in spite of bloody changes and fierce 
opposition from their nobility, succeeded in identifying 
themselves with the land and the people whom they had 
conquered. They guided the fortunes of the country 
with a distinct purpose and vigorous hand. By Leovi- 
gild (572 586), the power of the rebellious nobility was 
broken, and the independence and name of the Sueves 
of Gallicia extinguished. The still more dangerous reli- 



8j Bcgimiing of the Middle Ages. A. D. 589-642. 

gioLis conflict between the Catholic population and the 
inherited Arianism of the Goths was put down, but at 
the cost of the life of his son, Herminigild, who had 
married a Frank and Catholic princess, and who placed 
himself at the head of the Catholics. But Leovigild was 
the last Arian king. This cause of dissen- 
council of sion was taken away by his son ileccared 

"loicdo. (586-601), who solemnly abandoned Arian- 

ism, and embraced with zeal the popukir 
Catholic creed. He was followed by the greater part of 
his Arian subjects, but the change throughout the land 
was not accomplished without some fierce resistance. It 
led among other things to the disappearance of the 
Gothic language, and of all that recalled the Arian days, 
and to the destruction in Spain of what there was of 
Gothic literature, such as the translation of the Bible, 
supposed to be tainted with Arianism. But it determined 
the complete fusion of the Gothic and Latin population. 
After Reccared, two marked featuresof the later Spanish 
character began to show themselves. One was the great 
prominence in the state of the ecclesiastical element. 
The Spanish kings sought in the clergy a counterpoise 
to their turbulent nobility. The great Church councils 
of Toledo became the legislative assemblies of the na- 
tion; the bishops in them took precedence of the nobles; 
laws were made there as well as canons; and seventeen 
of these councils are recorded between the 
^^ end of the fourth century and the end of 

the sev-*ith. The other feature was that stern and sys- 
ternati'' intolerance, which became characteristic of 
Spain Under Sisebut (612-620), took place the first 
expu iion of the Jews. The Jews of Spain, whose 
settlements were numerous, rich, and of old date, had to 
choose between baptism, or else exile with the loss of 



A. D. 642-710. TJie Gothic Khigdom of Spain. 81 

their possessions. This legislation was renewed with 
continued severity, and the kings took a special oath to 
enforce it. The Spanish nation, meanwhile, was being 
knit together; the garrisons of the Greek empire were 
gradually driven to the coast, and, under Suinthila (620- 
631), finally expelled from the peninsula. The Gothic 
kings, mostly elected, men for the most part of energy 
and purpose, sometimes of relentless purpose, who still 
retained amid Latin influences their peculiar Teutonic 
names, governed with a statesmanship unknoAvn among 
the Franks. To break the restless and rebellious 
spirit of the nobles, which Gregory of Tours tliought 
peculiar to the Goths, Chindasuintha (642-652), an old 
man of eighty, banished at a stroke from Spain two 
hundred nobles and seven hundred freemen, confiscat- 
ing their estates, and reducing their families to serfdom. 
It produced profound peace, while the Franks under 
their feeble kings were distracted by the fierce rivalry of 
Bruinhild and Fredegund, and the rising Mayors of the 
Palace. Equally resolute in encountering the natural 
turbulence of their warriors and attentive to the political 
condition of the kingdom, the kings, for the most part, 
till the last showed themselves a match for their for- 
midable nobility ; and, under their care, the legislation 
of the West Goths attained a methodical form and a 
comparatively judicious and equitable character peculiar 
to it. Under Chindasuintha (642-652), the laws of the 
two races were fused into one, and for the first time 
among the Teutonic nations, personal law was changed 
into a law of the latid. Under the kings who succeeded 
him down to Egika (687-701), and from the councils of 
Toledo, grew up the Foritm Jiidiciivi, the Gothic Code, 
" the first law-book in which the Roman and German 
law was attempted to be harmonized into a systematic 



S2 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. D. 622-711. 

whole:" the first Western legislation which aims at ex- 
hibiting the philosophical idea of law. The Gothic 
realm of Spain was the most flourishing, and the most 
advanced of the new Teutonic kingdoms. It was rich 
and powerful, and though there was still much that was 
barbarous, ungovernable, corrupt, and dangerous, the 
powers of the country were in stiong hands; and the 
kings, the nobles, and the clergy, all who could repre- 
sent the nation, were learning to work together in their 
public assemblies. 

But however the Goths in Spain might have worked 
out their political career, their course Avas rudely ar- 
rested. The little cloud, which in the beginning of the 
seventh century, had arisen in Arabia, had by the begin- 
ning of the eighth, swelled and spread into a devastating 
storm, sweeping round all the coasts of the 
Saracen Mediterranean. In 622, the flight of Ma- 

conques homet from Mecca to Medina had fixed a 

new era in history— the Hegira. In the ten years which 
intervened between it and his death (632), he had es- 
t;iblished a new religion in Arabia, and converted the 
tribes of Arabia, or the Saracens, into its armed and en- 
thusiastic apostles. While the Goths had been settling 
their laws, while their kings had been niarshalling their 
court after the order of Byzantium, the Saracens had 
been drawing nearer and nearer. At the time that Chin- 
tila (636-640), was driving out the Jews, the Saracens 
were taking Damascus and Alexandria; while the fierce 
old man Chindasuintha was crushing rebel nobles and 
reforming the law, they were making their next step and 
invading Africa. While his son was ordering the offices 
of the court of Toledo after the imperial model, they 
were beginning their first nine years' siege of Constanti- 
nople (668-677). Their fleets had begun to attack the 



Overthrow of the Gothic Kingdom in Spain. Zt^ 

Spanish coast, though they had always been repulsed. 
But in Spain they had two allies : the Jewish race, 
there and in Africa smarting under their persecu- 
tions; and the factions, the ambitions, and the cor- 
ruption of the high clergy and nobles. A traitor, it 
is said, Count Julian, invited the Saracens, and they 
came, burning their ships behind them. The tremen- 
dous battle of the Guadalete, near Cadiz, lasting a whole 
summer week, from Sunday to Sunday, decided the fate 
of the kingdom and the course of its history. It was to 
Spain what the battle of Hastings was to England. The 
Gothic nobility perished m large numbers. 
King Roderick, the last Gothic king, was "y^92 ,71 • 
never seen again. In ten years' time the Saracen inva- 
sion had overwhelmed almost the whole country, and 
there was nothing left in Spa*n to Christianity and the 
European races, but the mour«-ains of the Asturias and 
Old Castile. Spain was the on^ one of the new Teu- 
tonic nations which was beaten d'^wn by an entirely alien 
power. It did not finally succurrb. In the northern 
provinces, the Christians not only v"\llied, but from their 
mountain fastnesses began a series -^f unintermitted at- 
tacks on the Mahometans. Behind ^.he screen of the 
Spanish highlands new kingdoms were organized: As- 
turias (718) ; Oviedo (737) ; Leon (914^ Navarre (905) ; 
Aragon, Castile (1035), At length the t-de of invasion 
began to roll southward till the Moors were swept away ; 
but several centuries of the early national 1-fe of Spain 
were consumed in that most terrible and demoralizing 
discipline, in which unsparing hatred is elevated to a 
heroic virtue — the discipline of a religious v/arfa'-e. 

Of all the new nations, the Franks alone, thoufh per- 
petually troubled with intestine quarrels, pr.-.n-'nence 
maintained their comparative exemption '^ the 
from the external shocks and disasters which 



S4 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. v. 

fell on their neighbours. Strong enough to keep together 
and to hold their own, they deepened the foundations 
of their power over Gaul and the lands of the Rhine, en- 
joying their own rich and magnificent heritage, asserting 
their supremacy over the heathen tribes of the German 
border. For more than three centuries after the Teu- 
tonic conquest, the Franks held the foremost place 
among the new nations. " When Rome fell," says Otto 
of Frisingen, a German chronicler of the 12th century, 
" ' Francia ' — the Frank race and kingdom, for we must 
not yet begin to translate by the later and narrower 
France — ' arose to take the crown.' " The phrase is of 
course exaggerated ; but it expresses with truth the com- 
parative prominence of the Franks. It is the more re- 
markable, because the kingdom of Clovis, instead of 
continuing in the hands of a single ruler, was imme- 
diately broken up under his descendants into separate 
kingdoms, acknowledging a loose tie of unity, and from 
time to time brought together, but always ready to fly 
apart again. And, further, in the family of Clovis, the 
Mervings or Merovingians, there is no sign, with one in- 
considerable exception, the Austrasian king Dagobert 
(628-638), of the political aims, or of the military capa- 
city, which appear among the Goths of Spain, and the 
English in Britain. The history of the Frank kings, in 
Gregory of Tours, is a sickening story of lawless and 
unbridled self-indulgence, of domestic hatreds, treach- 
ery, and cruelty. Brother was ever ready to assail and 
conspire against brother, to take him at advantage, to 
exterminate his children. Their attempts at enlarging 
their domains at one another's expense were usually as 
feeble and stupid as they were unscrupulous. Their 
prevailing and monotonous brutality v/as only checked 
by suDcrsiitious fears of the wrath of St. Martin of 



CHAP. V. Power of the Franks. 85 

Tours. It was only varied by good-natured licentious- 
ness and perfidy such as that of King Guntrani of Or- 
leans, or by pedantry like that of King Chilperic of Sois- 
sons, "the Nero and Herod of our time," as Gregory 
calls him, but who also dabbled in heresy, tried to add 
new letters to the Latin alphabet, and wrote Latin verses 
which would not scan. But the Frank race with their 
territorial chiefs, still Teutonic in the main, though in 
the west and south becoming less so in each successive 
generation, preserved the vigour, the audacity, the fight- 
ing qualities of their blood. They occupied a land of 
great natural wealth, and great geographical advan- 
tages, which had been prepared for them by Latin 
culture ; they inherited great cities which they had 
not built, and fields and vineyards which they had 
not planted ; and they had the wisdom, not to destroy, 
but to use their conquest. They were able with sin- 
gular ease and confidence to employ and trust the 
services, civil and rhilitary, of the Latin population. 
There is no appearance of any native rising to take ad- 
vantage of their internal discords, till late in the decline 
of the family of Clovis. Then, at last, and too late, the 
great south-western province of Aquitaine, with its natu- 
ral riches and its flourishing cities, its Roman and Gothic 
memories, its turbulent and warlike native tribes — the 
tribes which have left their names in portions of it, Vas- 
cones, Gascony, Basques, — struck boldly and obstinately 
for independence, and gave much trouble to the succes- 
sors of the Merovingians, the mighty founders of the 
Carolingian dynasty. The bond between the Franks and 
the native races was the clergy. From the time of Clovis 
their kings had deliberately favoured the Latin clergy. 
Their patronage was deeply mischievous to the purity 
of the Church, but it helped forward the alliance and the . 



86 Begi7iJiing of the Middle Ages. chap. v. 

fusion between Qermans and Latins. The forces of the 
whole nation were at the disposal of the ruling race ; and 
under Frank chiefs, the Latins and Gauls learned once 
more to be warriors. Thus strengthened, the Franks not 
only repelled any pressure from beyond the Rhine or 
the Alps, but they kept invasion at a distance by being 
themselves assailants. They were the one race whom 
the spirit of invasion carried backwards over their old 
steps and to their old seats ; the one nation which after 
settling in the West flowed back across the Rhine, and 
attempted again and again from Gaul the conquest of 
Italy, first from Narses, and then from the Lombards. 
Narses defeated them ; the Lombards for a long time 
held their own. While the family of Clovis ruled, the 
Franks ravaged Italy, but never subdued it. But over 
the German nations, Frisians and Saxons, Thuringians, 
Bavarians, and Alamans, the Frank kmgs asserted an 
imperfect and contested but persistent supremacy. 
Frank kings, allied in blood though perpetually quar- 
relling, were felt to be the heads of the Teutonic nations, 
from the Frisian marshes between the mouths of the 
Rhine and Weser, to the valleys and lakes of the Ala- 
mans, in what is now Switzerland. 

But among the Franks, as among other nations, two 
opposite tendencies were continually at work ; the ten- 
dency to aggregation and national unity, and the ten- 
dency to dispersion and independence. There were 
further, among the Franks, thoucrh they were 

Frank uriity ^ . . ,. 

an I divi- so friendly to Latin culture, conflicting dis- 

tions. Au3- . . , . . , _, 1 J 

tr. sia and positions to gravitate, m the Lastern lands 
Neil tria. towards what was German, and in the 

Western lands towards what was Latin. One of these 
conflicts was represented by the continual division and 
reunion of the kinirdom of Clovis. Divided at first 



CHAP. V. Ff'cink Unity and Frank Divisions. 87 

among his four sons, the different portions were merged 
or shared, as death removed one or more of the part- 
ners, till all the shares came into the hands of a sur- 
vivor, Clothar of Soissons (558), who again began the 
division among his children, with the same result. Eight 
times in the course of a century and a half. East and 
West Franks, Burgundy and Aquitaine, had been divi- 
ded ; three times, but only for a few years, they had been 
reunited under one king. But further, in these divisions, 
with great fluctuations of boundaries and possessions, two 
distinct centres of different national influences gradually 
disclose themselves. The Francia Roniana and tlie 
Francia Teuto?iica, the " Frankland," surrounded by a 
Latin population, and the original " Frankland " border- 
mg on the Rhine, and recruited from beyond it, came by 
natural and necessary causes, to be more and more 
contrasted with one another. From the middle of the 
sixth century, the Teutonic or Eastern division be- 
came more distinctly defined; it became known as 
Auster, Aicstrasia, with Reims, and then with Metz for 
its capitals ; in speech and feeling it was thoroughly Ger- 
man, and there was the focus of German influence. The 
land of the Western Franks acquired, in opposition to 
Austrasia, the name of Keusfer, Neiistria, a name the 
origin of which is not clear, the New, or You7igcr, or West- 
ern kingdom and which is also found with a correspon- 
ding Austria, a western and eastern division, among the 
Lombards of the north of Italy. Clovis's old capital, 
Paris, was its natural centre ; but Paris was sometimes 
claimed as a joint possession by his descendants, and 
then Soissons or Tournay were the residences of its 
kings. Burgundy, still a separate province, and some- 
times a separate kingdom, with Orleans or Chalons-sur- 
Saone for capitals, gradually became joined to Neustria. 



88 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. v. 

Aquitaine, with its wealth and its Latin cities, was at first 
shared by the different brother kings, and then became 
the prize of the strongest. But while Austrasia continued 
German, the Franks of the West were acquiring more 
and more a Latin character. Still, with wide and in- 
creasing differences, these great divisions formed one 
and the same Frank kingdom, — Frank, in opposition to 
Roman, as well as to Gothic, Lombard, Saxon, or Slave. 
For a long time it seemed uncertain whether what Clovis 
had conquered was to be one realm or many ; it seemed 
equally doubtful whether German influences and Ger- 
man languages were not to prevail to the Atlantic, the 
Pyrenees, and the ^Mediterranean. Three centuries 
passed before this great question was settled. But very 
slowly and by an insensible change, not easy to trace in 
detail, the two great countries which the Frank settlement 
had for a time partially united, were again finally divid- 
ed ; and Gaul, though under a new name, derived from 
the German occupation, drifted back into its Latin sym- 
pathies, and its opposition to Germany. 

The family of Clovis, the Mervings or Merovingians, 
^ ., J. fast degenerated. Thev lost their father's 

Failure of ° 

the Mer- Strength ; they retained, almost to the last, 

Mayors of their father's cruelty and unscrupulous per- 
tha palace. ^j^,^ They became unequal to the contest 
for power, not with the conquered people, but with the 
great men of their palace and retinue, their own com- 
panions and warriors ; the men whom they created 
dukes of provinces, and counts of great cities, who, 
though as yet hereditary only through the accident of 
personal qualities, were growing up round them into a 
powerful nobility. They were governed during the last 
part of the sixth century by terrible queens, — two rivals, 
equally famous for their beauty, their audacity and their 



The Mayors of the Palace. The Pipi?i family. 89 

crimes, — Fredegund, the low-born Neustrian Frank, the 
wife of Chilperic of Soissons (561-584); and Brunihild, 
the Gothic princess, the wife of his brother, Sigibert of 
Metz (561-575), the daughter of the Gothic king of 
Spain, a thanagild. Brunihild's sister, the Gothic wife 
of Chilperic, had been murdered to make way for Frede- 
gund; and the hatred and ambition of the Frankish and 
Gothic sisters-in-law filled the royal houses with intrigue 
and murder. Chilperic and Sigibert, Fredegund's hus- 
band and brother-in-law, both perished by her plots ; 
Brunihild, as ruthless in her crimes, but leaving a more 
royal memory in the local traditions of France, was torh 
to pieces by a wild horse, in her old age, by Fredegund's 
vindictive son, the second Clothar (613) ; she had been 
the murderess, he said, of ten Frank kings. Then there 
appear at the side of the king, and at the head of their 
administration, officers who are known in history as the 
" Mayors of the Palace" [Majorcs Donim\ elected by the 
great men, or appointed by the king, according as each 
happened to be the stronger. Under their feeble mas- 
ters, they rose into a position, new among Germans, but 
analogous to that of the barbarian Patricians, such as 
Stilicho and Ricimer, in the last days of the Western 
empire, and perhaps imitated from the usages of the im- 
perial court. Their office has contributed to the vocab- 
ulary of politics a new phrase for indirect or illegitimate 
power, just as a phrase for political nullity derives its origin 
from the decayed and helpless family of the fierce Clovis, 
the Rois Faineants. The Mayors of the Palace make 
their appearance amid the ferocious quarrels kept alive 
by Fredegund and Brunihild, of whose purposes and 
crimes they are the instruments or the victims ; but after 
the sacrifice of Brunihild to family vengeance and to 
the fears and hatred of the Frank nobles, the Mayors of 



90 Begiiining of the Middle Ages. chap. v. 

the Palace assume a new importance, as representing 
the rival interests of the Austrasian and Neustrian king- 
doms. After a number of insignificant names, men at 
length appear who concentrate in their hands the whole 
power of each state, and play with the last Chilperics 
and Childeberts like the pieces in a game of chess. In 
the beginning of the seventh century, the eastern Mayors 
of the Palace, the dukes of Austrasia, all of them united 
by kindred or family ties, Arnulf, afterwards Bishop of 
Metz, Pipin of Landen, Pipin of Heristal, established a 
character for wisdom and virtue which gave them a 
popularity and influence new in Frank history. Their 
natural antagonists were the Neustrian mayors, one of 
whom, Ebroin (656-681), was a formidable and danger- 
'ous opponent. For more than twenty years the struggle 
for supremacy went on. Each side was supported not 
merely by the lay chiefs of each kingdom, but by greac 
bishops, some of them since canonized, who threw 
themselves into the quarrels and intrigues of the contest, 
and sometimes, like St. Didier of Vienne and St. Leger 
of Autun, perished in it. After various turns of fortune, 
Ebroin, bold, resolute and cruel, had at last broken the 
Austrasian power, and established the supremacy of 
Neustria. But in 681 be was murdered ; and six years 
later Pipin of Heristal won the battle of Testry, between 
Peronne and St. Quentin, over the Neustrians (687)- 
The result of the contest was the decisive victory of 
Austrasia, the victory for two centuries of the German 
element among the Franks over the Latin, a revival and 
restoration of the original Teutoaic character in the 
Frank kingdom, for the next period of its existence. 
The line of Clovis lingered ingloriously after the battle 
^, „. . of Tcstrv, reicrninfr but not ruling, for more 

The Pi ms. - > c o is 

than sixty years. The new masters of the 



CHAP. V. Tlic Pipins. oi 

Frank kingdom were the dukes of Austrasia, Pipin 
of Heristal, and his sons, a vigorous family, German in 
blood, ecclesiastical in their relationships, with strong 
and clear political purposes. The founders of the race 
were the elder Pipin of Landen (1639), and St. Arnulf), 
(f64i), who, like so many of the bishops of the time, 
had been first a soldier and a statesman, and who, 
before he was bishop of Metz, was Duke of Austrasia 
and Mayor of the Palace One of Arnulf's sons became, 
like his father, bishop of Metz ; another married a 
daughter of Arnulf's friend, Pipin of Landen, also Mayor 
of the Palace. The grandson of St Arnulf and of Pipin 
was Pipin of Pleristal (1714). To reunite under one 
strong hand the dominions which the sons of Clovis had 
allowed to be broken up, was the policy of the long rule 
of Pipin of Heristal ; and like Clovis, he cultivated and 
used the friendship and good offices of the Church, but 
on a larger scale — allying himself with the pope as 
Clovis had allied himself with the bishops of Reims and 
Tours. Pipin's policy was carried out with success by 
his famous son, Charles Martel, "the Hammer." The 
German nations beyond the Rhine were more and more 
compelled to admit the supremacy of the Franks ; and 
Pipin warmly encouraged the missionaries from England, 
St. Boniface (68o-f755), and his companions, who about 
this time were beginning to penetrate among the heathen 
tribes, and were laying the foundations of some of the 
most famous German sees on the Rhine — Utrecht, Mainz, 
Worms, Spire. His son, Charles Martel 
(716-741), after a decisive struggle with do- ManeT 

mestic anarchy, encountered and beat back 
the greatest danger that ever threatened Western Europe. 
At the great battle, named of Tours, not far from the 
fields near Poitiers, where Clovis vanquished the West 



92 



Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. v. 



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II 





g-l- 

■O M 




CH. V. The Franks, the Popes, and the Lombards. 93 

Goths, Charles Martel routed the invading Arab host, 
and slew their formidable leader, Abderahman (732), 
This great overthrow, followed by the expulsion of the 
Arabs from Narbonne five years later, was the final and 
decisive check to the Saracen invasions of the \^ est. 
Aquitaine, which had began to aspire to independence, 
was once more recovered to Frank supremacy. Charles 
Martel shrank not from incurring the displeasure of the 
Church by using its property for political ends, and to 
maintain in efficiency the armies which he needed. Its 
increasing secularity and wealth invited spoliation. 
Bishops had degenerated into courtiers and soldiers ; 
and Charles Martel had no scruple in giving even such 
bishoprics as Reims and Treves, Paris and Rouen, to be 
held by his warriors and dependents. But if he dealt 
roughly with the Church at home, he was its patron 
abroad. By the novel relations which he was the first 
to establish between the Franks and the pope, he laid 
the foundations of that central power of the Church in 
Western Christendom, which in the middle ages grew to 
such vast proportions. Charles Martel was the first of 
the new princes beyond the Alps who was invited by the 
bishop of Rome to interfere in the affairs of Italy. There 
had been a long and increasing wrangle between the 
Lombards and the Italians, in which the popes usually 
represented at once the national spirit and pride of the 
Italians, the traditions of the Catholic faith, and their own 
high pretensions to stand in the very place of St Peter. 
The Lombards, probably faithless, certainly oppressive 
and encroaching, had, without any great coherence among 
themselves, made themselves the torment and the terror 
of Italy. They seemed unable to grow into a nation ; they 
still, after 200 years, were as far as ever from peace with the 
Italians. At length, under Liutprand (712-744), the ablest 



94 Begimiing of tlic Middle Ages. chap. v. 

of the Lombard kings, there first appeared a chance of 
consohdation for the kingdom, and friendhness with the 
Itahans. For once he alHed himself with a vigorous 
pope, Gregory II. (715-731 )» against the Greeks of Ra- 
venna : and he is said to have been the first donor of a 
city and territory (Sutri) to the pope. But the Iconoclas- 
tic controversy, on the use of images and pictures in 
worship, raised by Leo the Isaurian, had begun to divide 
Greeks and Latins. Liutprand shifted about from one 
side to the other, seeking only his own advantage in the 
quarrel. The Lombards outwitted themselves. The next 
pope, Gregory III. (713-743), despairing of peace, much 
less help from the Lombards against the Greeks, turned 
to the Franks beyond the Alps. Charles Martel was 
occupied, and near his end. In 741, Pope Gregory, 
Charles Martel, and the Emperor Leo died ; in 744, 
Liutprand followed them, and left a series of weak suc- 
cessors. But the foundation of the Frank alliance had 
been made; from that time the Franks came to be looked 
upon as the natural protectors of the popes, and a well- 
understood reciprocation of benefits began. It was a 
nevv position for the Franks to find themselves courted 
and flattered by the spiritual head of Roman Christian- 
ity ; it was a new position for the Roman bishop to find 
himself leagued by a community of interest and by an 
interchange of services with the rising power of the 
West. 

Without the name of king, Charles Martel was the 
second founder of the Frank kingdom. He left his 
power and office to his two sons, one of whom, Carlo- 
man, soon voluntarily resigned his rank and retired to a 
Pipin the monastic life at Monte Cassino. His broth -^r. 

Little, 747. the third Pipin, Pipin the Short, or the Little, 
resumed his father's task of consolidating the Frank 



A. D. 752. Deposition of Childeric III. 95 

power. But he advanced a step beyond his father's pol- 
icy. He resolved that the Merovingian dynasty should 
come to an end. Nothing is more remarkable than that 
at that early period of political forms and organization, 
and in an age of such ready and unscrupulous force, the 
name and the reality of power should have been, by a 
kind of constitutional fiction, not merely in different 
hands but in different families ; the name uninterrupted- 
ly in the family of Clovis, the reality in the hereditary 
dukes of Austrasia and Mayors of the Palace. It is still 
more remarkable that this should have lasted undisturbed 
for more than half a century. A writer, almost a con- 
temporary, Eginhard, the biographer of Charles the 
Great, has left a description of the forlorn and silent 
helplessness of the last descendants of Clovis. All the 
wealth, he tells us, and all the power of the state be- 
longed to the mayors of the palace. " Nothing was left 
to the king, except the kingly name ; with long hair and 
flowing beard, he sat on the throne to receive envoys 
from all quarters, but it was only to give them the an- 
swers which he was bidden to give. His kingly title 
was an empty shadow, and the allowance for his sup- 
port depended on the pleasure of the mayor of the pal- 
ace. The king possessed nothing of his own but one 
poor farm, with a house on it, and a scanty number of 
attendants, to pay him necessary service and respect. 
He went abroad in a waggon drawn by oxen, and guided 
by a herdsman in the country fashion ; thus was he 
brought to the palace or to the annual assemblies of the 
people for the affairs of the realm ; thus he went home 
again. But the government of the kingdom, and all 
business, foreign or domestic, were in the hands of the 
mayors of the palace." 

That with such a race as the Franks this state of things 



g6 Begin7iing of the Middle Ages. chap. v. 

should at last have come to an end is not surprising. 
What his father and grandfather had shrunk 

Fnd of the ^. . - ^ ^ • ^r • 

Mero- from, Pipm found hunseii m a position to 

rne*^75L. Undertake. He wo s sure of the help of the 

^•P " , , popes with whom his family had already es- 

crowned by ^ ^ _ -^ •' 

the pope. tablished a firm alliance, and who looked to 

of The Caro- the Franks as their deliverers in their trou- 
lingian line. -j^j^^ ^^-^^^ ^j^^ ^j^^j TeutoHic race which ruled 

in Italy. Pipin appealed to the pope (Zacharias) to say, 
whether it was right that he who had no kingly power 
should have the kingly name. Pope Zacha- 
rias gave the answer which it was intended 
he should give. He sanctioned the deposition of the last 
Merovingian king. Childeric HI., the last of the line of 
Clovis, passed without a struggle — a monk with his hair 
shorn, and so incapable of any secular dignity — from 
his palace or his farm, to a monastery. In the annual 
assembly of the bishops and great men at Soissons, Pipin 
was proclaimed king of the Franks (March, 752), and he 
received from the English apostle of Ger- 
many, Boniface, archbishop of Mainz, the 
consecration of the Church. Two years later a pope, 
(Stephen II.) for the first time crossed the Alps, and was 
seen in the West. He came to press again for aid 
against the Lombards. The help was promised ; and 
then from his hands, at St. Denis, in 754, 
Pipin and his two sons, Charles, a boy 
about twelve years old, and his younger brother Carlo- 
man, received the anointing which hallowed their king- 
ship, and which, as the pope held, made them true 
kings. 

The deposition of Childeric III. whatever was 
the form of the pope's sanction to it, was at any 
rate the first instance of such interference on the part of 



A. D. 752. Deposition of Childeric III. 97 

the popes. The pope's sanction, probably very vague at 
the time, and very obscurely recorded, was the subject 
at a later period of fierce debates, as to its authority and 
real bearing. But the whole transaction was ^j^^^^^. 
the first exercise, on the part of the popes, ampkofthe 
of a claim to change the allegiance of sub- poffng 
jects, to authorize the removal of one king po^er. 
and the election of another. Pope Zacharias and his 
successors acted, apparently, in this first instance, as 
arbiters, the most venerable that could be found, consult- 
ed on matters deeply important to the Frank nation ; 
they exercised a power which in this case they were 
prompted to claim and were invited to use. Unfortu- 
nately they were not disinterested arbiters. Their deci- 
sion was influenced by their own advantages and hopes; 
the coronation of the new king was the result of a bar- 
gain ; and for the service which they rendered they 
were paid in cities and provinces. Pipin, having in his 
company the pope who had crowned him with a solemn- 
ity new among Teutonic kings, crossed the Alps, hum- 
bled Aistulf the Lombard king, and forced 
him to give security that he would respect ^ '^" 

the rights and property of St. Peter. Aistulf evaded his 
engagement, and Pipin compelled him, after 
a second overthrow, to become tributary to 
the Frank kingdom, and to cede to his conqueror all 
that he had recently won of the territory still left to the 
Greek emperor in the north of Italy ; the exarchate of 
Ravenna, and the Fleminian " Pentapolis," an expres- 
sion for the lands and cities between the Apennines and 
the Adriatic, from Ferrara to Ancona. This territory the 
Frank king presented as a donation to St. Peter; it be- 
came, with some additions, south of Ancona and west of 
the Apennines, the Papal State. The real donation of 



98 Begimiing of the Middle Ages. chap. vi. 

the Frankish king was shortly afterwards supported by 
the production of what purported to be a still older dona- 
tion ; the famous forged " donation" of Constantine. 
Thus, from the annointing at St. Denis of the second 
kingly line of the Franks, arose, in the first place, the 
temporal dominion of the popes, held in the beginning 
as a temporal lordship under the overlordship of the king 
or emperor, then claimed by them as independent 
princes in absolute sovereignty; and next, the pretension, 
broadening out indefinitely from this precedent, to inter- 
fere in the political and civil affairs of Christendom, to 
dispose of kingdoms, to set up and degrade kings. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST. 

While in the West civilized order was disturbed and 

broken up, to be reconstructed on a new basis, in the 

East it went on continuously from the days 

Civili ation q{ Constantiuc till its temporary interruption 

preservKi in . 

tho Eastern by the crusaders (1203-1 261), and its de- 
empir^. struction by the Ottomans ( 1453). Constan- 

tine had transplanted the Roman name, the centre of 
Roman power, and much of what was Roman in ideas 
and habits, to Byzantium, the New Rome. There, with- 
out losing its deeply impressed imperial character, it also 
became Greek, and it became Christian. The result was 
that remarkable empire, which, though since its fall it 
has become a by-word, was, when it was standing, the 
wonder and the envy of the barbarian world, the mys- 
terious " Micklegarth " "the Great City, the Town of 



CHAP. VI. Civilization in the Eastern Empire. 99 

towns " of the northern legends. It inherited and it re- 
tained the great Roman traditions of centralization, of 
scientific jurisprudence, of elaborate and systematic ad- 
ministration. It worked upon an unbroken experience 
of government, on unbroken habits of organization, as 
familiar and easy to it, as it was difficult in the West. It 
improved and perfected the great legacy v/hich it had 
received of republican and imperial law. It often ex- 
hibited what seemed to be hopeless feebleness and de- 
cay; but beneath these appearances were the permanent 
elements of vast and enduring strength. Amid the con- 
vulsions and changes of the West, it lasted unchanged 
for more than ten centuries, almost the same in lan- 
guage, in spirit, and even in its ways and forms, under 
the last Constantine as under the first. For ten centuries, 
in spite of terrible disasters, bloody revolutions, loss of 
provinces, domestic misrule, itself maimed, weakened, 
unprosperous, it yet maintained itself, the unaided out- 
post of Christendom, against the fiercest assaults, not 
only of swarming barbarian hordes, but of the victorious 
enthusiasts of Islam. It had, indeed, in full measure, 
the vices of an over-cultivation, which is not braced by 
a corresponding moral force and elevation. Much in it 
was degenerate, hypocritical, effete, corrupt, degraded ; 
it had many of the faults of European civilization in the 
eighteenth century. But it is idle to talk of mere weak- 
ness in an empire, which for 1,000 years preserved ci- 
vilized society, laws, institutions, commerce, arts, amid 
the most tremendous shocks and dangers ; which could 
bear to be so badly, cruelly, feebly governed, as certainly 
it often was, without falling to pieces before its enemies. 
In truth, during all the dark days of trouble in the West, 
contemporary with its rude attempts and beginnings of 
social order, there was on the Bosphorus one of the most 

L.ofC. 



loo Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. vi. 

magnificent cities that the world has seen. In it, as at 
Rome and at Venice, was centrahzcd a power, strong 
in its resources of government, in its experience and 
skill to use its vast materials and its varied populations, 
in the great wealth created by an extended and active 
commerce, in the knowledge how to apply it, in the pos- 
session of all the mechanical and scientific experience 
of those ages. In it ruled a succession of men, most 
various in character and fortune, many very bad and 
very incapable, but among them a large proportion who 
were of the stamp and force of those who save states. In 
it, the literary tradition, inherited from Antioch, from 
Athens, from Alexandria, still survived, and though taste 
and power might decline, they never failed as they did 
in the West, and they sometimes rose to a respectable 
standard. And in it, the visitor from the rude West 
might find a court, with its pomp and luxury, its refine- 
ment, its politeness, its etiquette, which, long after the 
days of Charles, Alfred, and Otto, was to the courts of 
the Franks and English, what the Courts of Versailles 
und St. James were to the Court of Peter the Great. 

The Eastern empire did not at once, either after the 
partition between the sons of Theodosius (395), or after 
the deposition or abdication of the last Western emperor 
(476), lose its connexion with the West. Long after the 
separation in fact had come, the idea of the unity, the 
unanimitas , of the empire lasted. The Eastern emperor, 
Zeno (474-491), had received from Odoacer the insignia 
of the dethroned Augustulus, in token that the world 
only needed one emperor; and he was acknowledged, 
in form and courtesy, at least, by Goths and Franks, as 
the head of the Roman world. Further, he was so ac- 
knowledged by the popes, who were becoming more and 
more the centres of genuine Roman influence, amid the 



Civilization in Easter7i Empi?'e — -Justinian. loi 

visible triumph of the new races. And it was long before 
the hope and purpose of exacting real obedience were 
abandoned at Constantinople. 

In one signal instance this purpose was victoriously 
carried out. This was the reconquest of Italy, Africa, 
and part of Spain, under Jusiinian. In the 

r 1 rr-i n-Ti/^\ Just nian. 

year after the great Theodenc died (526), 
the most famous in the line of Eastern emperors, since 
Constantinople, began his long and eventful reign (527- 
567). Justinian was born a Slavonian peasant, near 
what then was Sardica, and is now Sofia; his original 
Slave name-, Upraivda, was latinized into Justinian, when 
he became an officer in the imperial guard. Since the 
death of the second Theodosius (450^ the Eastern em- 
perors had been, as they were continually to be, men 
not of Roman or Greek, but of barbarian or half barba- 
rian origin, whom the im^perial city and service attracted, 
naturalized, and clothed with civilized names and 
Roman character. Justinian's reign, so great and so un- 
happy, was marked by magnificent works, the adminis- 
trative organization of the empire, the great buildings at 
Constantinople, the last and grandest codification of 
Roman law. But it was also marked by domestic shame, 
by sanguinary factions, by all the vices and crimes of a 
rapacious and ungrateful despotism. Yet it seemed for 
a while like the revival of the power and fortune of 
Rome. Justinian rose to the highest ideas of imperial 
ambition ; and he was served by two great masters of 
war, foreigners in origin like himself, Belisarius the 
Thracian, and Narses the Armenian, who were able to 
turn to full account the resources, still enormous, of the 
empire, its immense riches, its technical and mechanical 
skill, its supplies of troops, its military traditions, its 
command of the sea. Africa was wrested from the 



I02 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. vi. 

Vandals (534); Italy from the successors of Theoderic; 
much of Spain fiom the West Goths. The Vandals were 
absolutely swept away, though Africa never recovered 
from their century of misrule. Italy was more fiercely 
disputed (535-553). According as Belisarius was absent 
or present, the contest swayed backwards and forwards. 
Rome was more than once taken and retaken. Totila, 
the Goth, able, brave, and dangerous, at one moment 
had it in his power, and had actually taken the momen- 
tous resolution, to destroy the city of Rome from the 
face of the earth. But what Belisarius began, Narses 
finished. Totila was slain ; the Gothic power perished 
(553). Yet the reconquest was transient. After Narses 
came the Lombards (568), and then the Saracens It 
was not the destiny of Byzantium to rule the world, or to 
govern alien and distant provinces. It retired within 
its eastern borders. But it long kept a hold on maritime 
districts in Italy, Ravenna, the Pentapolis, Calabria, and 
Naples. For a still longer time it held Sicily, It gave 
titles to barbarian kings like Clovis, and legalized their 
conquests. And till the great change in the opening of 
the ninth century, it kept not merely its Exarch at Ra- 
venna, but its Count at Rome, and claimed and some- 
times compelled the allegiance of the popes. 

The emperor, regarded as invested with an almost di- 
vine commission, inherited the despotic powers of the 
, ^ line of Augustus and Constantine ; and ac- 

Strength of ^ ^ 

the Eastern cording as he used this vast power with abil- 
empira. .^^ ^^ weakness, the fortune of the empire 

rose and fell. Yet the empire itself was held together by 
great networks and scaffoldings, of long date, and of 
immense strength and tenacity, which subsisted, inde- 
pendently of what the emperor did or suffered, and which 
to a certain degree limited his absolute power. There 



CHAP. VI. Strength of the Eastern Empire. 103 

was a great system of local government, and another of 
civil administration ; and there was a powerful and popu- 
lar Church, identified with the interests and sympathies 
of the people, and much mixed up with them, even in its 
monastic elements. And whatever might become of the 
emperor, there was in the empire itself a stability and 
solidity, of which there is yet no trace in the West. It 
had all the vices, the weaknesses, the failures of a des- 
potic government of the modern type ; but it had also 
the experience, the trained habits of order and industry, 
the enlightenment and the resources, which distinguish 
civilized governments, whether free or absolute, from the 
unpractised apprenticeship of those whose political his- 
tory is yet beginning, and which, under ordinary circum- 
stances, impart firmness and strength unattainable with- 
out them. 

What is certain is, that the Eastern empire was able 
to withstand the continued pressure of its ever-renewed 
enemies with continued success. It suffered 
fearfully in the effort. The Avars, the Turk- Its power of 

■' _ resistance. 

ish Bulgarians, the Hungarian Magyars, the 
many tribes of the Eastern Slaves, the Persians, and at 
last the Saracens, the Moguls, the Seljuks, and the Otto- 
mans, assaulted, insulted, maimed the empire Besides 
them came enemies equally formidable, the rough 
Frankish and Norman counts and barons who led the 
first crusade (1096) ; the more ambitious ones who, with 
the merchant princes of Venice, led the fourth (1203). 
The empire passed through the greatest vicissitudes of 
prosperity and disaster. Province after province was 
rent away from it. Its population was thinned, its wealth 
destroyed by ravages which it could not check. It lost 
Africa, Spain, Egypt, Syria, Asia up to the Bosporus. It 
was hemmed in by Bulgarians and Slaves in Europe. 



I04 Beginning of the Middle Ages. lhap. vi. 

Yet during these centuries of defensive war and often 
of misfortune, the empire resisted ; and, in spite of all, it 
cultivated the arts and industries of peace, as they were 
cultivated nowhere else in Europe, and showed in Con- 
stantinople a capital which in splendour and magnifi- 
cence no other realm could rival. 

This continuation of the old traditions of civilization 

amid the turbulence and the uncertainties of Western 

Europe, is the characteristic feature of inter- 

Preserving gg^ jj^ ^^g Eastern empire. It had, indeed, 

civilization. _ '^ 

as a finished despotism, much that was evil, 
much that involved ultimate ruin ; but besides its natural 
coherence and toughness, the mischiefs which endan- 
gered it were continually arrested by rulers of high 
and strong character. Time after time, when its fall 
seemed at hand, when faction, or mutiny, or vile court 
intrigues had shaken it, when the wickedness and folly 
of some tyrant, or the madness and cruelty of some am- 
bitious woman had coincided with the strength at the 
moment of some foreign barbarian to threaten its 
existence, it was redeemed and saved by some great 
or some able emperor. Fortune, as we call it, doubt- 
less, in its ten centuries, must have counted for much 
in its wonderful escapes, in its many deliverances. 
But much was owing to the preponderance, in spite 
of all drawbacks, of superior civilization, experience, 
and intelligence. Terrible and revolting stories are 
common both to East and West, of bloodshed, treach- 
ery, and passion ; but Byzantine vices as well as 
virtues, unlike those of the West, are those of a society 
which has inherited a long training and cultivation. No 
writer of the tenth century in the West, certainly no 
emperor or king, could possibly have written on politics, 
history, geography, statistics, mihtary tactics, agriculture, 



Eastern Empi] e p7'eseTved Civilized Order. 105 

as the Byzantine emperor, " born in the pur- 
ple," Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The dif- 9" 9o9- 
ference between East and West, in all that comes by long 
familiarity with the resources of cultivated intellect, and 
by inherited skill, cannot be better measured than by 
comparing his writings with the vigorous, but rude, 
compositions of the court of Charles the Great, or the 
efforts of Alfred, noble as they were, to begin an English 
literature. 

Yet the Eastern empire suffered even more than the 
West from the neighbourhood of its barbarian enemies. 
The tribes of the Hunnish or Turkish stock. 

Settlement 

and the Slave races which had taken the of bar- 
places left vacant by the great Teutonic Avars • Bul- 
movement of the Vandals, Goths, and Lom- fiav^'^' 
bards to the West, pressed continually on the 
Eastern empire, as they did on the Franks, Bavarians, 
and Saxons, and with more disastrous effects. The 
countries to the south of the Danube, between the 
Eastern Alps, the Adriatic, the Euxine, and the moun- 
tains of Greece, gradually became filled with the Slave 
races, which unlike the earlier Gothic tribes, became 
rooted there, and have kept hold of them till this day. 
As usual, they began by ravaging, and ended by occu- 
pation and settlement. But their restless and predatory 
habits long gave trouble to the empire. Its policy varied 
between keeping them quiet by annual subsidies, — set- 
tling them as colonists to hold one another in chsck, as 
Heraclius (630-638) brought do\yn the Servians and 
Croats against the Avars, — taking them into pay as 
soldiers, — or inflicting chastisement by military expedi- 
tions. The Slaves, however, were many of them agri- 
cultural communities, and they colonized. But behind 
the Slaves were the more destructive Turks, in their 



io6 Higi/uii/ig of the Middle Ages. chap. vi. 

various forms, — Turks proper, first known by that name 
in the sixth century, with whom, in the heart of central 
Asia, the Byzantine emperors kept up an interchange of 
ambassadors, — and the nearer and more dangerous 
tribes of the same stock, the Avars and the Bulgarians, 
who had been conquered and fled before their Eastern 
kindreds. All these tribes, Turkish or Slave, pushed 
their expeditions sometimes to the walls of Constantino- 
ple, and no province of the empire was safe from them. 
Its military power, when fairly brought against them, 
was in the long run too strong for them. The Huns of 
Zabergan were driven off in the last victory gained by 
Belisarius (559). The Avars and their Slavonian allies 
were humbled by the generals of the Emperor JMaurice 
(589-600). But the control of the empire never became 
strong enough to enforce peace and order in the coun- 
tries on the Danube. Barbarian kingdoms, like that oi 
the Avars and then of the Bulgarians, rose and fell, in 
spite of all the insecurity and ruin, new nations, agricul- 
tural as well as pastoral, grew up in a rude fashion, yet 
with definite traditions, and with peculiar institutions, in 
the rich plains and the highlands between the Adriatic 
and the Euxine. Such were the Western agricultural 
Slaves, whom Heraclius planted between the Danube 
and the Adriatic, and who became the Croats, Ser- 
vians, and Bosnians of later history. In time the 
Slave races, and those which like the Bulgarians, 
adopted their language and became fused with them 
received Christianity. The German missionaries from 
the Frank empire encountered among them the Greek 
brother apostles of the Slaves, Cyril and Methodius of 
Thessalonica (860-885), the translators of the Scriptures, 
perhaps the inventors of the Slave alphabet, certainly 
^mong the most indefatigable missionaries of the Chris- 



CHAP. VI. Persian Wars. Heraclius. \qi 

tian Church. Partly in concert, partly in rivalry, the 
German bishops and the Greek monks laboured to teach 
and humanize the Slaves. The Latin and Greek Churches 
strove and often intrigued for the allegiance of the 
Slave converts. In the Western countries they became 
obedient to the pope. In the territories of the empire, 
Bulgarians and Servians, as after them, the Russians, 
accepted the teaching of the Eastern Church, brought 
to them in their mother tongue. But the northern bor- 
der of the empire was a land in which disorder and law- 
lessness became chronic. And a great state, of which 
scientific law was one of the characteristic features, was 
powerless to leave the impression of law on the barbarian 
settlers within its territories. 

On its Eastern border, the hereditary war with Persia, 
under the dynasty of the Sassanian kings, the destroyers 
(226) of the Parthian kingdom, and the inhe- 

^ ' & ' V/ars with 

ritors of its long feud with the Republic and Persia, 
the Empire, continued to damage and some- 
times to menace the empire, till it gave place to one still 
more formidable, the long struggle with the Mahometan 
invasion, first under the Arabs, then under the different 
Turkish dynasties. Justinian had been succeeded by a 
series of emperors, men of unusual excellence but not 
fortunate. The last of them, the Cappadocian Maurice 
(582-602)5 was murdered by a worthless and cruel soldier, 
the Cappadocian Phocas (602-610) ; but the hopes of the 
empire were restored by the accession of a man of Latin 
nurture and sympathies, the African, Heraclius (610). 
Under Heraclius, it seemed as if the empire, reformed 
and reinvigorated, were to retrieve its fortunes. He met 
his difficult and threatening circumstances with courage, 
judgment, and masterly ability. The stress of war had 
lately gone heavily against the empire. The Persians, 

1 



io8 JSt'ginnifig of the Middle Ages. a. d. 610-627. 

under a famous king, Khosrou, or Chosroes Nushirvan, 
had broken through the Roman hne of fortresses. Khos- 
rou had stormed and ruined Antioch and other cities of 
Syria, and, in spite of the successes of Belisarius, imposed 
a tribute on Justinian, as the price of a fifty years' truce 
(540-562). Under Justinian's successors, with one short 
interval under Maurice, the Persian ravages had been 
uninterrupted, and were drawing nearer and nearer to 
the capital. HeracHus, at his accession, found himself 
with an empire in disorder, between two formidable ene- 
mies, sometimes in alliance — the Avars on the north, 
and the Persians, under a second Khosrou, on the east. 
The Persians were carrying all before them. For ten 
years (617-627) they were masters of Egypt. For ten 
years they were encamped within view of the palace^of 
Constantinople. They had plundered Jerusalem, and 
carried off the sacred relics and the Christian patriarch 
to Persia. They were masters from the Black Sea to 
Cyrene. They would not hear of peace. So dark 
seemed the prospect that for a time Heraclius meditated 
the transfer of the seat of empire from Byzantium to 
Latin Carthage. But the thought was a transient one. 
He never really lost heart. Without hurry, with un- 
daunted patience, with steady and perfect skill, he spent 
his first years in restoring order in the empire and the 
army. Then confident in the strength which he had left 
in Europe, he sprang forth on the Persians. In a series 
of brilliant and triumphant campaigns (622-628), he re- 
covered the provinces and the boundaries of the empire, 
he penetrated into Persia and captured the royal palace, 
bringing back in triumph the spoils of Jerusalem (627) ; 
and from the terrible blows inflicted upon it, the Persian 
power finally sank. Its next assailants were the Ma- 
hometan Saracens, just starting in their career of con- 



A. D. 627-641. Saracen Conquests. 109 

quest, and it fell at once before them. But the vanquisher 
of Persia had also to encounter the Saracens. And, 
whatever be the explanation, whether from 
the treachery of his officers, or from political Sarren''^ 
or religious disaffection, Heraclius, who had 
rescued the eastern provinces from the Persians, was 
helpless to prevent them from falling a prey to the sol- 
diers of Abubekr and Omar. The end of the reign of 
Heraclius saw the beginning, the alarming beginning, of 
that invasion of the Mahometan powers of Asia, which 
was to become henceforth the standing peril of the 
Eastern empire, which was to cripple it and cut short its 
borders, and which, at last, was to destroy it. Peace 
was hardly made between Heraclius and the Persians, 
before the x^rabs appeared in Syria (628-633). With 
Heraclius, the great captain and conqueror, still on the 
spot, they took Damascus before his eyes (635). Jerusa- 
lem, Emesa, Aleppo, Antioch fell one after another. He 
had to fly from the scenes of his glory ; and before he 
died, he heard the portentous tidings of the capitulation 
of Alexandria, and of the conquest of Egypt 
by Amrou and the enthusiasts of the new '*^' 

religion. The reign of Heracli iS, which had promised 
to re-establish the civilization and majestic peace of 
Rome, the fame of which was recognized and embel- 
lished with fables at the court of the Frank king Dago- 
bert, ended with the sudden appearance of an irresistible 
power in the East which was to extinguish those hopes 
for ever. 

But the final catastrophe was not to be for more than 
800 years. The family of the great Heraclius furnished 
a succession of degenerate emperors, some of them mis- 
chievous and cruel tyrants, whose reigns coincided with 
the later Merovingian times, and the rise of the May- 



no Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 641-711. 

ors of the Palace. It was a time in the East, as well as 
in the West, of public confusion and decline. During 
the hundred years of the rule of the family 
^i'o°n of^'^"^' of Heraclius, the Saracens extended their 
Hcraciius. conquests round the Mediterranean, and at 

711. Murder ^ . 1^1 1 • i • j 

of Jusiinian icn<^th into Spam and Gaul, and twice laid 
siege to Constantinople itself. But if they 
were rending away the provinces of the empire, and 
even daring to strike at its heart, they learned also how 
great, even in its time of distress and defeat, were its de- 
fensive resources and inherent strength. It could bear, 
without giving way, the vices and weakness of its gov- 
ernment, even in this hour of extreme danger, and be- 
fore the most formidable of assailants in the very flush 
of their triumph. Nothing had yet arrested the Saracens. 
Before them all the great cities of the East had fallen. 
Neither the sea nor the deserts had been a barrier to 
them. They had overthrown the Teutonic Goths of 
Spain as easily as Persians and Syrians. They were 
unchecked for a hundred years, from the death of Mo- 
hammed till the victory of the Franks and Charles Mar- 
tel at Poitiers (632-733). Their power was acknowledged 
from the Oxus and the Indus to the Atlantic. But 
they twice recoiled from the walls of Constantinople. 
After the rapid changes of emperors which took place 
on the extinction of the family of Heraclius, another of 
those foreign soldiers, who, while the constitution of the 
empire went on unaltered, made the most vigorous chiefs 
of the executive power, was proclaimed em- 
\mT'^^ peror by the troops of Asia, a-d he founded 

717-802. ^^ imperial line which lasted till the days of 

Charles the Great. This was the Isaurian, Leo III., 
known as the Iconoclast — the Image-breaker. He, 
like Heraclius, received the empire in an hour of 



7i7~So2. Isau7'ian and Macedo7iian Emperors, iii 

great peril. The Saracens, with the fame of their 
astonishing conquests, were now a second time before 
Constantinople. But Leo deserves with Charles Martel 
the glory of daring to believe that they were not irresisti- 
ble. He forced them to retire from before Constantinople 
(716-18), and thus checked them definitively in Eastern 
Europe. Under Leo's vigorous government, the empire 
rose from the decline into which it had fallen under the 
degenerate family of Heraclius. Few imperial lines had 
more repulsive features than the Isaurian. But it was a 
line of able and resolute men. The empire under them 
assumed a narrower compass, and, having lost Africa, 
Egypt, and Syria, passed into its more distinctive " By- 
zantine " phase. But if its pretensions were lowered, its 
power was more concentrated. Greater vigour was 
thrown into the administration ; population increased, 
and with it commerce and wealth ; the Slave agricultural 
settlements throve only too well for the older inhabitants ; 
the cities were thickly peopled ; the army was well or- 
ganized and trained; the administration of the provinces 
was systematically carried out, and in spite of frequent 
arbitrary and cruel acts of power the ordinary rule of the 
law was maintained. Notwithstanding the incorrigible 
vices and inconsistencies of the court, an improved 
moral tone became discernible both in lay and eccle- 
siastical society ; and, to quote the latest and most careful 
historian of the Eastern empire, Mr. Finlay, " in the 
times of the Isaurian emperors, and their successors 
of the Macedonian line " — a period which corresponded 
to the renewed Frank kingdom under Pipin and Charles, 
and the first Carolingians — " a declining empire was 
saved by moral vigour in society, and the strong efforts 
of the central power." But every expression of praise 
in these ages of the world must be comparative. When 



I I 2 Hcginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 867-1054. 

the administration was wisest, the law most just, the 
army most in order, commerce most thriving — when the 
condition of the people was most prosperous, and the 
public enemy on the north or east most successfully re- 
pelled—yet, with scarcely a variation, the court was 
corrupt and vicious, and frequently infested with fashions 
of hypocritical, or grossly inconsistent, devotion. And 
the ancient and widely-spread vice of cruelty, not yet, 
and not for many ages subdued by its natural enemy, 
Christianity, was still, in forms of the most atrocious 
barbarity, the regular resource not merely of those who 
feared and hated, and of those who punished, but of 
those who had to compel obedience, or to anticipate and 
guard against danger, whether as soldiers, or as civil 
rulers. Some of the most dreadful incidents of horrible 
ferocity ever recorded, mark the history of the Eastern 
empire, under the conduct of its ablest and most success- 
ful rulers. 

The political and military events of the East did not 
much affect things in the West. Embassies passed to 
and fro ; once, in these times, an emperoi 
tives of the (Constans II. 641-668) appeared at Rome, 
emperors. ^^^ even cxilcd a Roman bishop (Pope 

Martin I. 649-655) ; and there were a few royal mar- 
riages, especially when there came to be emperors in the 
West. But the Eastern empire was of much importance 
in its influence on the ideas of kingly power, as they 
developed themselves in the contemporaneous society 
of Western Europe. The great emperor, Augustus, 
Basileus, at Constantinople, was the type and standard 
looked up to with admiration and envy by the kings of 
the Franks and even of the English. His dignity was an 
example and precedent of boundless power, and of ex- 
travagant homage to the person of the prince. In civil 



CHAP. VI. Religious Supremacy of tJie Empero7's. 113 

matters there was much in the rooted national ideas and 
habits of the West to tone down these exaggerations ; 
but his prerogatives suggested great pretensions in 
regard to religion. At Constantinople, the theory of 
a divine and sacred supremacy in the sphere of re- 
hgion, was carried out to mischievous lengths. Con- 
stantine's (311-337) policy, high-handed as it was, had 
been really to leave the Church to settle questions itself, 
to speak its own mind and to define its own belief by its 
legitimate organs. His successor Constantius (337-361) 
reversed this. He claimed to be the arbiter and judge 
of religious controversies. He claimed for the emperor 
the right of prescribing creeds, and he imposed Arianism 
on the empire. A belief which was not the real belief of 
the Church, in due time was shaken cff. But the bad 
and tempting precedent had been set of bringing the 
secular power, though in conjunction with the recognized 
organs of the Church, to interfere in questions of pure 
theology. These questions at the beginning of Church 
history excited the profoundest interest, for they related 
to the object of Christian worship, and to the central 
truths and real meaning of the facts of the Christian re- 
demption. Instead of leaving them fairly to the on»y 
possible authority, the great councils of the Church, and 
its natural representatives, — for, if they were not of au- 
thority, there was no other — the emperors took on them- 
selves more and more to make their own judgment the 
law of public belief, to direct the issues of the conflicts 
of religious opinion, to dictate the terms of comprehen- 
sion, to enforce unity of conviction and language by 
stringent and penal laws. And the usurpation became 
constitutional by the readiness of the bishops of the 
Church to accept and authorize the interference of the 
emperor, when it was on their side and directed against 



114 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. vi. 

opponents, and by giving a sanction, tacit or express, to 
the detestable and fatal violence which too often accom- 
panied controversies so momentous. With the later 
emperors, such as Justinian and Heraclius, it was less a 
strength of personal belief, than an impatience of dis- 
putes and contradiction, and a fear, sometimes not an 
unreasonable fear, of political troubles, that directed their 
policy. Constantius attempted to impose a dogma; his 
successors, to express and enforce a compromise in 
which great controversies were to end. The rude bar- 
^, ,,,.,. barian soldier, Zeno, by a formulary of his 

The ^'■Heno- ■' ^ 

ttcon;' or, own, attempted vainly to put an end to the 

"Formulary i- • • r ,^ r^^ ^ ■ ■ r 1 

of Union." divisions ot tne Church arising out of the 
'^^^' rival heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches, 

as to the consequences which flow from the idea of the 
Incarnation. Justinian exercised his imperial supremacy 
in religion in the most extravagant and the most fruitless 
manner (519-565). And in the subtle but dangerous 
, ^ , . ,. controversy which followed, on the realitv 

• Ecthesis, ^ 

or '* Exposi- of the moral constitution of our Lord's hu- 
JHeraclius, mail nature, the Monothelite controversy, 
^^-r ^„" r... Heraclius tried, like Zeno, and like Zeno in 

Jype, or ♦ ' 

"Formu- vain, to impose terms of his own by the im- 

lary, of ^ . . 

Omstans II. pcrial authority on the consciences and con- 
victions of those who felt the interest of the 
question. Under Leo the Isaurian and his line, the im- 
perial claim was extended from doctrines to the usages 
of the Church (717-792). Superstition had without doubt 
gathered round the customary use in worship of devo- 
tional pictures and images ; and it is possible that the 
taunts of the victorious Mahometans may have made 
them more odious to the rude and impatient soldier. 
But on the strength of his claims as supreme ruler of 
religion, he attacked the abuses with an unintelligent 



CHAP. VI. Eastern and Western Churches. 115 

and intemperate violence, which was mischievous in it- 
self and gave the utmost advantage to the defenders of 
what was indefensible. He, and still more 

Leo, 

his son Constantme v., arrayed agamst 717-741. 

.1 1 ii ir i lU 1 Coustantine, 

themselves the seli-respect, the good sense, 741-7S3. 
the conscience, the pietv, of the time, as o ■■ 

' . . hecond 

well as its prejudiced bigotrv and supersti- council of 

. - , , .' , , , . Nice, 787. 

tion. After the most aoommable cruelties 
and persecution, they utterly failed in checking the 
abuses they aimed at ; and they brought about a reaction 
which hindered any reasonable settlement of a matter 
which reason was eminently competent to ^ ., ^ 

^ * ( ouncil of 

settle, and which the soberer temper of Frankfort 
Charles the Great showed the way to settle 
with moderation and wisdom. 

The tyranny with which the emperors enforced their 
authority and their own personal opinions aggravated 
the violence and mischief of the disputes. It led in 
more than one case to great and lasting schisms. It was 
copied by those who suffered from it Worse still, it be- 
came accepted as part of the royal prerogative, when 
Charles the Great came, though with greater moderation 
than the Eastern emperors, to carry out his office as 
guardi.an, reformer, and over-looker of the religious in- 
terests of his kingdom. And it led to confusions between 

the domain of conscience, and the powers 

' ^ Effects of 

of the state, which have caused infinite the imperial 
hajm and misery in civilized society, and supremac>. 
which have not yet been got rid of. Not the least of the 
irreparable mischiefs which it occasioned under the suc- 
cessors of Leo the Iconoclast was the impulse which it 
gave to the rising ambition of the popes to claim a rival 
and universal supremacy, and to the quarrels, accidental 
and comparatively insignificant in themselves, which ul- 



ii6 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. vi. 

timately determined the permanent separation of the 
Eastern and Western Churclies. Under the tyranny of 
the emperor, patriarchs and bishops were deposed and 
replaced at his will. In one of these many transactions, 
a deposed and ill-used patria.rch, Ignatius, 
hopeless at Constantinople, appealed against 
his rival Photius, to the Pope. It was an appeal for jus- 
tice against wrong — for protection and countenance 
abroad, where none could be had at home. Such ap- 
peals had been often made ; it was a time when men 
appealed to whatever power within reach seemed likely 
to help them. But the judge who was now appealed to 
as arbiter in this personal quarrel, was the first pope of 
the type afterwards to be so frequent, the daring and im- 
perious Nicolas I. (858-867).' Supporting a just cause 
against intrigue and despotism, he put his own claims to 
redress it, and to punish the wrong-doers, on assump- 
tions of authority as extravagant as those of the emperor. 
The dispute gradually became complicated with doctri- 
nal questions, and got into a shape in which it became 
irreconcilable. The pope excommunicated Photius 
(863), and Photius excommunicated Nicolas (867). It 
might have seemed but a conflict which would pass 
away, as more than one such conflict had passed, with 
those who were parties to it. Nicolas died soon after 
(867), and Photius, after many falls and restorations, 
lived to be at last acknowledged by a pope, John VIII. 
(879). But the wound in fact proved to have been a fa- 
tal one, and could not be healed. And the great schism 
of East and West dates from the high-handed assertion 
of Roman spiritual superiority, provoked by the wanton 
insolence of imperial despotism. 



CHAP. VII. The Carolingian Ki7igs of the Franks. 117 



CHAPTER VII. 

CHARLES THE GREAT, KING OF THE FRANKS, 768-80O — 
EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS, 80O-814. 

The change in the Frank line of kings in the middle 
of the eighth century (752) was an event of great 
and wide importance. Under the race of Clovis, the 
history of the Franks, though they were the leading 
nation of the West, was, with the exception of their 
chronic struggle with the kindred German tribes on 
the border, and occasional and aimless in- ^ ^ 

. . liiterest of 

roads into Spain and Italy, confined within F/ank his-ory 
their own limits. Their dealings with other ^.eseccndln^e. 
nations, and even with the pope, the centre £^^1^1*^^ J^^f " 

' r r » tel,^ 714-741. 

of the ecclesiastical system, were few and Pipin, Carlo- 
man. 741-747. 
unimportant. But with Charles Martel and Pi,.in alone, 

his sons the range of Frank history widens, ^^"^ ^ 
and it begins to affect the general course of European 
history. The first care of these able rulers was to con- 
solidate once more the strength of the Franks. Con- 
scious how great it was, they gathered up again under a 
firm hand the loosely compacted and fast-dissolving 
elements of the Frank power. They maintained the 
claim of the Franks to supremacy over their ruder kin- 
dred in Alamannia, Bavaria, Thuringia, and even, 
though with more trouble, over the Saxons. By their 
vigour and determined perseverance, they beat down 
at last the obstinate and dangerous revolt of Aquitaine, 



ii8 ' Beginning of the Mid die Ages. a. d. 771. 

which, under a line of powerful dukes, Teutonic in 
name, but southern in feeling, was fast assuming the 
character of a war of national independence on the part 
of the Latin South against the Teutonic North. Pipin 
at his death (768), had reunited once more under one 
king all the conquests of Clovis and his successors. 
And having done this, the Frank kings departed from 
their former isolation, and entered into new relations 
with the world outside them. They did three things 
I. Carrying on the alliance of Charles IMartel with the 
popes, they founded and built up, as has been already 
said, the temporal dominion of the papacy, and gave a 
new importance to the political influence of the popes in 
Europe. 2. Next, as a consequence of their close rela- 
tions with the popes they revived in their family the 
name of the Roman empire and the dignity of the 
Roman emperor, long suspended in the West, which 
were to pass, after them, through many hands and many 
lines, but were never to be extinct again till the begin- 
ning of our own century. 3. And lastly, they laid the 
foundations of modern Germany, and decisively re- 
claimed it from its primitive barbarism to Christendom 
and to civilization. 

What Pipin had begun, and begun with sagacity and 

force, was carried on by a yet stronger hand, on a 

larger scale, and in the course of a longer 

Cha-les reign. Pipin died in 768, and the king- 

the Lrreat. or / > ir> 

dom of the Franks, according to a Frank 
rule of inheritance, or an idea of expediency which no 
one then dared to break through, was, with the con- 
sent of all the Franks, shared, or more properly, gov- 
erned in partnership, by his two sons, Charles and 
Carloman, who with their father had received the dig- 
nity of kings from Pope Stephen in 754 The risks of 



771—^^14- Charles the Great. 119 

dissension between them were averted, and the course 
of history determined, by the early death of Carloman. 
In 771 Charles became the sole king of the Franks. In 
our materials for knowledge, as well as m the character 
of the events, we pass into a new stage with the appear- 
ance of Charles, whom his own age, at least after his 
death, was to name the Great. We at once acquire a 
mass of contemporary information, meagre, indeed, 
compared with more recent records and with many 
older, but in comparison with those of the preceding 
times, both full and trustworthy. Of Charles we have a 
contemporary biography, the first instance of a lay or 
secular biography in Christian times, his life by Egin- 
hard, or Einhard. For public events, a series of annals 
begins, not improbably originating under Charles's 
orders, v^hich give details of time and place with a care 
unknown before. We have a large, though incomplete, 
collection of his acts of government and legislation ; 
and further, a considerable number of important letters, 
both public — such as those of the popes', collected by 
Charles's command; and private — such as those of 
Charles's friend and adviser, the Englishman, Alcuin, 
or Alcwin. 

The name " Charlemagne," by which he has been so 
long known, is one of those popular names which ought 
to be abandoned ; not from considerations of scholarly 
accuracy, but because it helps so much to keep up a 
completely false idea of what he was. We in England 
ought to hold, at least, to our traditional form " Charle- 
main," which was Milton's authority. He has been re- 
presented by French historians as in some sense a 
French king, the most illustrious and wide-ruling of the 
second dynasty, one in the same line of kings as St. 
Louis and Henry IV. It cannot be too clearly and firmly 



I20 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

,,. , borne in mind that this, rooted as the con- 

Cnarles not 

a. 'king of ception has become, is absolutely mislead- 

France." . t- • . , , 

ing. r ranee, as it was to be and as we 
know it, had not come into existence in his days. What 
was to be the France of history was then but one pro- 
vince of the Frank kingdom, and one with which Charles 
was personally least connected. Modern France, again, 
is a nation in which the Latin or Latinized races have 
won the ascendancy. But Charles, king of the Franks, 
was, above all things, a German. He was in language, 
in ideas, in policy, in tastes, in his favourite dwelling- 
places, a Teutonic, not a Latin or Latinized king ; and it 
is entirely to mistake his place and his work to consider 
him in the light of a specially " French " king, a prede- 
cessor of the kings who reigned at Paris and brought 
glory upon France. Modern France is a fragment, 
made up of fragments, split off from the original Frank 
kingdom long after Charles's death ; the kingdom which 
he inherited and enlarged was as different, in spirit, in 
constitution, in national characteristics, as it was in 
boundaries, from that portion of it which ultimately re- 
tained the Frank name in the West. Charles did noth- 
ing to make modern France. The Frank power on 
which he rose to the empire was in those days still 
mainly German ; and his characteristic work was to lay 
the foundations of modern and civilized Germany, and 
indirectly, of the new commonwealth of nations, which 
was to arise in the West of Europe. 

The necessary condition of a great ruler in those days 

was that he should be a great warrior. Charles, whose 

real claim to greatness lies in the clearness 

warror: with whicli he discerned the need of order 

character j, i i^ii.- j„ 

of his wars. "^^^ \?i\\\ and sought their sources and secu- 
rities in the deeper springs of human nature, 



7 7 1 -S 1 4- Charles' s Wars. 121 

was, first of all things, in the eyes of his own generation, 
a king who was always at war, and always victorious. 
In his warlike habits he was not different from the Frank 
kings before him. Children of invaders, they had per- 
petually to repel invasion, to cope with rivals, to prove 
their prowess and strength. The special feature of 
Charles's wars was the indomitable pertinacity with which 
he carried them to the end, and the untiring alacrity and 
rapidity with which he moved from one point to another 
of his wide frontier of war. Among the turbulent popu- 
lations which on all sides beset the Frank kingdom, two 
heavy and permanent masses of hostility hung like? 
storm-clouds, never removing and always threatening, 
on his north-eastern and his southern borders ; the 
heathen Saxons between the Rhine and „_ 

>v s,^s with 

Elbe, pressed upon by the heathen Slaves barbarians: 
beyond the Elbe ; and the Saracens in cens'^'A'vars^^' 
Spain. The Saracens he pushed back to Northmen. 
the Ebro, adding the Spanish "march," or borderland, 
beyond the Pyrenees to his kingdom, and claiming, 
though not without continual dispute, the great cities of 
Saragossa and Barcelona. The Saxon war was far 
more serious and troublesome. It was chequered by 
grave disasters, and pursued with undismayed and 
unrelenting determination, on which he spared neither 
himself nor others. It lasted continuously — with its 
stubborn and ever-recurring resistance, its cruel devas- 
tations, its winter campaigns, its merciless acts of ven- 
geance, — as the effort which called forth all Charles's 
energy for thirty-two years (772-S04). The subjugation 
of the Saxons more resembled in its s^'stematic com- 
pleteness the policy followed by the kinsmen of the 
Saxons in Britain than anything which had been seen 
on the continent. But it decided, finally and for good. 



12 2 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

the question in Germany between heathenism and Chris- 
tianity, between continued barbarism, or the first steps, 
the only ones then possible, to civiUzation. The Saxon 
lands, so rudely reduced to obedience, so rudely Chris- 
tianized, were planted not only with castles, but with 
towns and mission stations — Osnabriick, Paderborn, 
Miinster, JMinden, Halberstadt, Bremen — bishoprics 
along the course of the Lippe and the Weser — monas- 
teries, like Fulda, which were both agricultural colonies 
and schools of learning. The tribes of Upper and Mid- 
dle Germany — Bavarians, Alamans, Thuringians, Hes- 
sians — longer accustomed to the assertion of Frank 
supremacy, and partially converted by the English and 
other missionaries whom Pipin had encouraged, were 
fast becoming states organized, or ready to be organized 
into dukedoms of the Frank kingdom ; and any signs of 
restlessness, as in the frontier dukedom of Bavaria, v/ere 
vigorously put down (788). But beyond the refractory 
Saxons, and the more settled German lands, was a sec- 
ond line of barbarism from the Elbe to the Danube, 
stretching without defined limit far back towards the 
East, from which it was recruited. There were the Huns 
or Avars, in the plains between the Danube and the 
Save ; there were Slave races of many names, from the 
shores of the Adriatic, the Eastern Alps, and the moun- 
tains of Bohemia, to the havens of the Baltic ; and there 
were yet the more threatening Northmen, who had access 
to the still unsettled Saxon lands by the isthmus which 
is now Slesvig, and to whose ships the whole sea-board 
of the Franks, from the mouth of the Weser to the 
mouths of the Rhone, lay open. With all these Charles 
carried on persevering and, for the age, scientific 
war. Military bridges, sometimes double ones, were 
thrown across rivers like the Elbe and Danube, and their 



77 1-8 14- He destroys ine Louibard Kingdom. 123 

approaches duly protected. An attempt was made, 
though in vain, to facilitate military communications 
by a navigable canal, connecting affluents of the Rhine 
and Danube. His operations were conducted on mutu- 
ally supporting lines of march, converging on the threat- 
ened point ; definiteness of purpose, great patience, 
caution, celerity, appear in them. His most brilliant 
war, in the eyes of his contemporaries, was that in 
which the power of the Hunnish Avars — no longer terri- 
ble as of old, but still able to give trouble — was broken. 
Their " Ring," or palace camp, was forced and de- 
stroyed ; their " Chagan " or chief acknowledged the su- 
premacy of the Frank king, and was baptized ; and the 
spoils of the Avars, the collected plunder of their old 
forays, were said to be so great as to bring down the 
value of silver by a third. The Slave races, quarrel- 
some and rapacious, were kept in awe by chastisement, 
or were involved by his policy in wars among themselves. 
The Northmen, even to Charles, were the most formida- 
ble of his foes. They fomented Saxon resistance ; and its 
fiercest leader, the Westphalian Witikind, ever had a 
ready refuge, when hard pressed, in neighbouring Den- 
mark. The Danish king, Godfrid, became, in Charles's 
later years, more and more daring in his acts of aggress- 
ion ; and after obtaining from Charles the honour of a 
conference on equal terms between Frank and Danish 
chiefs, was preparing to measure his strength with the 
great emperor in a pitched battle, when he was assassin- 
ated and Denmark was involved in civil war. But the 
tide of Northern invasion was rising, and before Charles 
died it was beginning to break with alarming violence 
on all the coasts of his realm. He was fully alive to 
the danger. The northern coasts were visited and 
inspected by the emperor himself. Fleets were built ; 

K 



124 Beginning of the Middle Ages, a. d. 

Boulogne and Ghent were made his harbours and arse- 
nals. He died before his fortune at sea was tried. But 
the growing insults and ravages of the Northern pirates 
in Friesland, of the Moorish pirates over the coasts and 
islands of the Mediterranean, and of the Greek fleets in 
the Adriatic, threw a shade at the close over the splen- 
dour of his wars, and disquieted his last years with well- 
grounded anxiety. 

All these wars were part of a concentrated and per- 
sistent plan to reduce and keep under control the 
dangerous barbarism which hemmed in and 
The Lombard pj-essed uDon his kins^dom. But the Lom- 

war. ^ ^ Y 

bard war was a political one, waged less 
even for the conquest of Italy than for its indirect results. 
The ill-compacted and turbulent kingdom of the Lom- 
bards, with its almost independent dukedoms — Tuscany, 
Spoleto, Benevento, Friuli, Trent— had usually been, in 
later times, an inoffensive neighbour to the Franks, but 
often, though it had ceased to be Arian, a troublesome 
one to the popes. We have seen how a pope prevailed 
on Pipin to undertake the defence, as it was called, of 
the Church, and how Pipin had answered the appeal, and 
had transferred some of the fairest provinces of the Lom- 
bard kingdoms to the popes. But the quarrel still went 
on. Letter after letter from the popes (Stephen III. 
753-757, Hadrian I. 772-795) brought the most lamentable 
complaints of Lombard injustice and oppression. St. 
Peter was made to speak in his own name, promising 
heaven to those who should deliver him from wrong, and 
denouncing divine vengeance on those who should be 
slack in assisting him. Charles had, indeed, set at nought 
a threat of excommunication from Pope Stephen IV. 
(769) to be pronounced if the king dared to marry a 
daughter of King Desiderius, oneof the "foul and horrid" 



8oo. Charles Emperor of 'the Ronans. 125 

race of the Lombards. But when the serious work of his 
reign began, he seems to have thought it wise as early as 
possible to arrange his relations with the pope. In 772, 
leaving the Saxon war, he crossed the Alps, and by the 
Mont Cenis and the St. Bernard threw the whole power of 
the Franks into Italy. The passes were forced, and no 
stand was made in the field. There was a winter siege 
of Pavia. It capitulated ; the last Lombard king, Desi- 
derius, was carried captive and placed in a Frank 
monastery ; and the Lombard power came to an end. 
The king of the Franks became also king of the Lom- 
bards, the lord of all Italy, except the Venetian islands 
and the south of Calabria, still held by the Greeks. Thus, 
by German hands, the internal ascendancy of the Ger- 
man race in Italy, which had had lasted, first under the 
Goths, and then under the Lombards, for 281 years, was 
finally broken^ A German was still king over Italy, as 
for ages Germans were still to be. But Roman and na- 
tive influence reconquered its supremacy in Italy, under 
the management and leadership of the bishops of Rome. 
The Lombards, already becoming Italianized, melted 
into provincial Italians. The Teutonic language dis- 
appeared, leaving a number of words to Italian dialects, 
and a number of names to Italian families. The last 
king of the Lombards bore an Italian name, Desiderius. 
The latest of Italian national heroes bears the Bavarian 
and Lombard name of Garibaldi. 

But the overthrow of the Lombards, and the gift of 
provinces and cities to St. Peter had even more eventful 
results. The alliance between the king of ^, 

° Close 

the Franks and the bishop of Rome had Gillian ebe- 

, - , , 1 . 1 ITT- 1 -!->• • tween the 

become one of the closest kmd. With Pipm pra ks and 
and Charles begin the titles, given them by ^^^ p-pes. 
the Roman chancery, of "Most Christian King," and 



126 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

" Defender of the Church." The German king and the 
Itahan pope found themselves together at the head of the 
modern world of the West. But the fascination of the 
name of Rome still, as it had done for centuries, held 
sway over the Teutonic mind. It stood for power, for 
knowledge, for the perfection of civil life, for the purity 
of religion. The barbarians despised Romans, but they 
venerated Rome. It was not unnatural that the idea 
should recommend itself, both to the king and the pope, 
of reviving in the West, in close connexion with the 
Roman primacy, that great name which still filled the 
imagination of the world, and which in Roman judg- 
ments, Greek Byzantium had wrongfully stolen away — 
the name of Caesar Augustus, the claim to govern the 
world. There was a longing in the West for the resto- 
ration of the name and authority, "lest," as the contempo- 
rary writers express it, "the heathen should mock at the 
Christian if the name of Emperor had ceased among 
them." And at this moment, the government at Con- 
stantinople was in the hands of a woman, the Empress 
Irene. Charles's services to the pope were 

Charles, , j v- • 4. • r 

empe-orof recompensed, and his victorious career ot 
the Romans. j^ore than thirty years crowned, by the res- 
toration at Rome, in his person, of the Roman empire 
and the imperial dignity. The same authority, which 
had made him "patrician," and consecrated him king, 
now created him Emperor of the Romans. On Christ- 
mas day, 800. when Charles came to pay his devotions 
before the altar of St. Peter's, Pope Leo III. — without 
Charles's knowledge or wish, so Charles declared to his 
biographer, Einhard, and, it may be, prematurely, as 
regards Charles's own feeling — placed a golden crown 
on his head, while all the people shouted, " to Charles, 
the most pious Augustus, crowned of God, the great and 



8oo. The 7\uo Empires : East a7id West. 127 

peace-giving Emperor of the Romans, life and victory." 
Bv all round him, the pope and clergy, the Roman chiefs 
and people, the great men of the Franks, he was chosen 
and thrice proclaimed emperor, "at Rome the mother 
of empire, where Caesars and emperors were wont to sit." 
And by the pope himself, he was "adored" "after the 
manner of the emperors of old.'' All saw in his match- 
less power, and iu their own unanimity, the hand of God. 

Thus a new power arose in Europe, new in reality and 
in its relations to society, though old in name. It was 
formally but the carrying on the line of the successors 
of Augustus and Constantine. But substantially it was 
something very different. Its authors could little foresee 
its destinies ; but it was to last, in some sort the political 
centre of the world which was to be, for 1,000 years. 
And the Roman Church, which had done such great 
things, which had consecrated the new and mighty kings 
of the Franks, and had created for the mightiest of them 
the imperial claim to universal dominion, rose with them 
to a new attitude in the world. Humble as she was in 
outward bearing to the terrible warrior she had crowned, 
she drew from the act her vast pretensions to be the in- 
terpreter of Providence, the giver of kingdoms, the mis- 
tress of nations, the arbitress of the allegiance of man- 
kind. What might not that authority bestow or take 
away, v^^hich had renewed and given the Roman empire ? 

The coronation of Charles at Rome, in the face of 
an imperial line at Constantinople, finally determined, 
though it did not at once accomolish, the separation of 
East and West, of Greek and Latin Chris- 
tianity. This separation had long been im- separation 
pending, perhaps, becoming inevitable. The WeS^' ^"^ 
old tradition cf the necessary unity both of 
the Church and the Empire had resisted it. But on the 



128 Begin7iing of the Middle Ages. A. d. 

other hand, there were the separating forces of distance, 
of difference of language and race, of antagonist and 
irreconcilable claims. There was also diversity of inter- 
ests and dangers, between Rome and Constantinople, 
between East and West. The emperor at Constanti- 
nople, while he was the only emperor, kept a nominal 
but feeble hold on the West. He had a footing, though 
a precarious one, in Italy. Rome acknowledged or de- 
fied him, according to the turn of events, or the balance 
of strength. He had the pope as his subject, and was 
sometimes able to make him feel, when refractory, the 
penalties of resistance. But besides the natural uneasi- 
ness of the Romans under the supremacy of Greek and 
modern Constantinople, there was the growing aliena- 
tion of East and West in religious thought. The Eastern 
Church had been the scene of a series of fierce dissen- 
sions, and great schisms. The Monophysite controversy in 
the seventh, under Justinian had led on to the Monotaelite 
controversy in the seventh, under Heraclius and his family; 
and these were followed in the beginning of the eighth, by 
the great strife about the use of images, provoked by the 
reforming zeal of Leo the Isaurian, and his successors. 
In all these controversies, the emperors had interfered 
with a high hand, both as rulers and as theologians, and 
had imposed their statements of doctrine and their laws, 
sometimes not without violent resistance, on their bishops 
and people In the West, there was far less learning 
and subtlety, but there was a steadier and less variable 
tradition of teaching. The popes found themselves in 
constant conflict with the East. They sometimes sub- 
mitted, and found themselves entangled in heresy for 
their compliance ; more often they opposed or moder- 
ated. But the result was increasing suspicion and jeal- 
ousy, increasing irrita-tion on both sides ; and an increas- 



7 7 1-8 1 4- Charles' s Administ7'ative Policy. 129 

ing desire on the part of the popes, as heads of the 
Western Church, to shake off all dependence, political, 
as well as ecclesiastical, on the East. It was this grow- 
ing estrangement, as well as the desire to call back 
authority if not greatness to Rome, which prompted 
Pope Leo III. to crown the king of the Franks. He 
accomplished more than probably he intended. He 
meant to throw off a galling yoke, to free his own hands 
from inconvenient and mischievous shackles ; but out 
of the rift which he made grew the greatest and most 
hopeless schism in the Christian Church. It is possible 
that Charles may have had designs for uniting East and 
"West under himself, by family alliances or otherwise. 
He certainly negotiated, and he wished to di=->arm 
Eastern jealousy. Ultimately, he was content with a 
recognition of his title by the Greek emperor. But the 
rivalry was too distinct and formidable for negotiations 
to disguise. " Have the Frank as a friend, but not as a 
neighbour," was the Greek saying. One Roman empire 
was still the only received theory. But 07ie Roman em- 
pire, with its seat in the West, or 6'«^ Roman empire 
governed in partnership by two emperors of East and 
West, had become impossible in fact. The theory of its 
unity continued for ages; but whether the true successor 
of Augustus and Theodosius sat at Constantinople, or 
somewhere in the West, remained in dispute, till the 
dispute was ended by the extinction of the Eastern em- 
pire by the Turks on May 29, 1453. 

Charles's military successes, his good understanding 
with the Church, and finally his assumption of the place 
of Roman emperor, strengthened and de- cha.les's 
veloped his strong bent towards political ^oHtcal 
ortjanization and social improvement. In organiza 

that early stage of political experience and 



130 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d, 

knowledge, the work was very limited which the ablest and 
strongest man could do in securing order, and giving a 
better direction to the wild and ungovernable forces 
round him. But in Charles we see, for the first time 
since the Goth Theoderic and in more favourable circum- 
stances than his, the strong purpose to restrain disorder, 
and to foster all that seemed healing and hopeful in the 
state of things round him. If his unresting activity 
turned out afterwards to be, in many respects, fruitless 
or even mischievous, this is but what might be expected 
in times when the wisest measured imperfectly the real 
facts about them, and the consequences of what they 
did. Results are at all times apt to fall short of inten- 
tions. It is eminently the case, when society is emerging 
out of the inexperience of barbarism into the efforts 
of civilization. 

Charles was an administrator rather than a legislator, 
though his laws, and his revisions of former laws, were 
numerous. His system of government was 
istraiive ' simple, and he aimed at combining with the 
system. excrcisc of liis own authority the sanction 

of publicity and popular concurrence. The force of his 
administration consisted in the method and energy 
which he infused into the public service, the steadiness 
and activity which he required of his agents, and the 
patient vigilance with which he watched over the whole ; 
though it is more than probable that in that rough time, 
these agents carried out but inadequately and unequally 
his attempts to establish som.e sort of discipline in the 
vast and wild world over which he presided. His 
officers were of two classes. There was the local hier- 
archy : dukes governing provinces, some of which have 
since become kingdoms ; bishops with extensive do- 
mains, enjoying great immunities ; counts and inferior 



771-814- Charles' s Administrative Policy. 131 

chiefs, either territorial, or in the great cities, removable 
at pleasure, though with the natural tendency to become 
hereditary. All were bound both to the military and 
political service of the kingdom. And, next, there was 
a central system of special commissioners, envoys, dele- 
gates, Afissi as they were called, deputed with ample 
powers from the king himself to different parts of his 
realm, to superintend, and if necessary to take into their 
hands the administration of justice, and generally to in- 
spect, examine, reform, report, and thus to bring the 
whole of the kingdom under the superintendence, and, 
as it were, within the touch of the central authority. 
Further, besides that he was incessantly moving about 
in different parts of his kingdom, he brought himself 
twice every year face to face with his chiefs and people 
in the general assemblies [Malli, Placita), which, ac- 
cording to the Teutonic custom of doing all important 
things in stated gatherings of chiefs and freemen, wer^ 
held in spring and autumn, for public business. The 
place of meeting varied, but it seems to have been always 
in the Eastern and German part of the Frank kingdom. 
The meeting was sometimes held, as in the Saxon cam- 
paigns, in the heart of the enemy's country, and served 
as the gathering point for the summer's war. But the 
spring meeting especially brought together all that was 
most powerful and important in the kingdom round the 
king; and though his authority was paramount, and his 
policy was his own, all was done in public, and derived 
strength from public cognizance and assent. Of the 
mode of holding these assemblies we have a contem- 
porary account from Adalhard. Charles's relative and 
minister, which shows how in them Charles came into 
contact not only with his bishops and great men, but 
with all classes of his subjects, and how in a rough and 



132 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

informal way their opinions were brought before him, 
and he learnt from, the best information the tempers and 
conditions of the distant parts of his kingdom. 

Of the business done in these assemblies, we have re- 
cords in the collection of public acts, called the " Capitu- 

T ., . laries "of the Frank kings. They are a vast 

Legislation, . q j 

civil and and most miscellaneous accumulation of 

ThTcapi- laws, regulations, judicial decisions, moral 
tuianes. prcccpts, literary extracts, royal orders, arti- 

cles of inquiry civil and ecclesiastical, circulars and spe- 
cial letters, down to inventories of farm stock, household 
furniture, and garden stuff and implements, in the king's 
residences. All these documents emanated from the 
king, and were communicated by him to the assemblies. 
They cover the whole field of life. With scarcely an at- 
tempt at order, they show the confusion with which mat- 
ters of every sort, political, religious, economical, were all 
thrown together in the attempt to regulate them. But 
they also show the strong instinct of early days as to the 
moral and spiritual laws, which underlie and animate 
the outward framework of civil society. Few collections 
of laws contain such curious materials for a picture of the 
ideas and habits of the time. Charles's efforts had but a 
partial influence on the disorder of his age. The exis- 
tence of his laws does not necessarily imply their actual 
effect. This, which must always be remembered in any 
attempt to illustrate history by legislative records, is spe- 
cially true of times like his. But his legislation marked 
where the disorder was ; and it left on men's minds a 
stronger impression than any of which the trace is to be 
found before his time, of the public rights of the state, 
and of the obligations towards it both of its rulers and 
members. The Capitularies first exhibit with some dis- 
tinctaess that idea of the public interest, as distinct from 



603-750. The Church. 133 

the rights and claims of individuals, which is the one 
germ of civilized order, and which gives the measure of 
its progress. Lastly, in the Capitularies are to be found 
in their earHest form, the legalized beginnings of some 
of the most characteristic institutions belonging to modern 
Europe. We see the rudiments of that feudal system 
which so powerfully influenced its political growth, its so- 
cial ideas, its customs as to the tenure of land, its indus- 
try and the distribution of its wealth. We see, too, the 
earliest outlines of the manifold relations between Chris- 
tian kings and the Church ; of the whole system of ben- 
efices and endowments, civil and religious ; and of the 
wide-spread law of tithes. 

The order wliich Charles tried to establish in his king- 
dom, he tried to establish in the Church. He found in it 
two opposite conditions. On the one hand, 
inits public character and in its high places, chu-ch: 

it was lapsing deeper and deeper into that corruption 
worldliness and license which were the higher 
fruits of the favour which it had received 
from its coarse and brutal Merovingian patrons. Its 
chiefs, the bishops and abbots, had become a privileged 
and powerful order in the state ; but along with this had 
come a decline in all learning, in their sense of their real 
duties, and in public sentiment about these duties. Bish- 
ops, like dukes and counts, rode to battle and fell in the 
wars, and often lived as carelessly and selfishly as the 
courtiers and soldiers, from whom thev were often taken. 
Even the sainted bishops of the seventh and eighth cen- 
turies were often men engaged in the quarrels of the 
Merovingian courts, like St. Arnulf or St. Leger ; or they 
were pious and skilful craftsmen, devoting their art to 
religion like St, Eloy, and adding to it earnest but very 
humble teaching. It was no wonder that Charles Mar- 



134 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

tel invested a good soldier with the two archbishoprics 
of Reims and Treves, and his nephew with the bishoprics 
of Paris and Bayeiix, and the archbisliopric of Rouen, 
besides two great abbeys. It is no wonder to read of a 
pope asking Charles's son to punish a faithless Roman 
envoy by making him a Frank bishop, in order to keep 
him in exile. The schools of the monasteries barely 
kept alive the knowledge of Latin, the only access to the 
inherited wisdom of the world, the only access to Christian 
teaching. Of all the Christian centuries, the seventh is 
in the West the most barren of literary effort and spiritual 
greatness. In that great see which had become the 
centre of Western Christendom, the bishops of Rome 
had begun to travel fast along that downward road which 
was to lead them step by step, from the nobleness and 
devotion of the first Leo and the first Gregory, through a 
miserable greed after provinces and cities, to the in- 
credible scandals of the tenth century. At Rome, too, 
in the pursuit of worldly greatness and power, learning, 
together with better things than learning, perished. In 
the letters of the popes to the Frank kings, in the eighth 
century, adulation and servility, the servility of a beggar 
who whines and threatens, are sometimes expressed in 
Latin which defies the most elementary rules of ordinary 
grammar. 

But though much belonging to religion,, and everything 
relating to literature, was at the lowest level, there was 
another side to this. There were, in this age of deep 
degeneracy, good and earnest men, who could act if 
they could not write. That very seventh century, which 
-.. . saw the Frank episcopate so widely corrupt, 

Mi^^sionary i r j i 

z. ai in the was the age of one of the purest and boldest 

missionary efforts on record. The seventh 

century was the age of the conversion of England, the 



600-750- Missionary Enierpri e. 135 

age of Augustine and Theodore of Tarsus, of Aidan, 
and Chad, and Aldhehii. It was the age of the missions 
of the Irish monks, Columban and his followers, in Bur- 
gundy and in the vast unknown heathendom beyond it, 
in the plains and forests of Central Europe, in the 
Alpine valleys and on the Danube and the Rhine. A 
Frank missionary, Emmeran from Poitiers, was the 
apostle and martyr of the Bavarians. Towards the end 
of the seventh century, when Christianity had taken root 
in England, and its first-fruits had appeared in the piety 
and learning of the Northum.brian Bede of Jarrow, a 
burst of missionary zeal carried English teachers, emu- 
lating their Irish forerunners, to win to the Gospel the 
lands from which their fathers had come. Willibrord of 
Ripon preached to the heathen of Friesland, and founded 
the see of Utrecht. His greater follower, the Devonshire 
Winfrid, afterwards known by the Latin name of Boni- 
face, the first archbishop of Mainz, devoted his life, in 
the first half of the eighth century, first as a preacher 
and then as a martyr, to the conversion of the Germans 
— Frisians, Saxons, Hessians, Thuringians, Bavarians. 
He not only preached but organized. Armed with au- 
thority from the two greatest powers in the West, the 
king of the Franks and the pope of Rome, he mapped 
out the new missionary conquests into dioceses, he 
founded sees where the conquest was still to be made, 
he held the first German councils (about 743). He 
also founded monastic schools like the famous Fulda — 
families of earnest men devoted to a definite work, the 
work of evangehzing. The effect was great of Teutonic 
preachers coming to Teutonic populations from lands of 
Teutonic occupation, and with the tie of a common 
language. Some of the oldest specimens of the languages 
of continental Germany are the translations made for 



J 



6 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 



the use of the German converts ; the baptismal forms, 
the Lord's prayer, the Creed. 

Charles, like his father Pipin, was too much of a 

statesman to be indifferent to the good and evil in the 

Church, and to the great and increasing place which it 

, occupied in the growing society of the new 

Church nations. The Irish and Enghsh missiona-- 

government. • • r r- i ■ n 

ries were pioneers oi rrank miiuence m 
central Germany, in some cases, its forlorn hope ; and 
they were instruments of keener temper than the sword 
for the permanent conquest of barbarism. Both for this 
reason, and from a genuine sympathy for their dauntless 
courage, and severe and thorough-going religion, they 
were warmly encouraged by the new Frank kings. On 
the other hand, the disorder in the Church invited from 
so strong a ruler as Charles the most uncompromising 
policy of interference and correction. His ecclesiastical 
administration was unswerving in purpose and absolute 
in its claims. Never in modern Europe has the union 
of Church and State, exhibited in the supremacy of the 
king, been carried to so high a point. The pope was 
there recognized, doubtless, as the highest religious 
authority ; he sanctioned and consecrated Charles's 
power; but the pope was too completely dependent for 
his Italian dominions on his alliance with the Franks, to 
venture seriously to thwart his protector. In the Capitu- 
laries, we find laws on ecclesiastical and spiritual matters 
placed exactly on the same footing as the strictly politi- 
cal and civil laws. The rebellious Saxons were baptized 
as a proof of their submission to the king, just as in later 
times, the other sacrament has been used as a test of 
loyalty to government ; and, in their case, to depart from 
the religion of their conquerors was punished with death, 
as if it were treason. Bishops and abbcts were peremp- 



771-814- Ecclesiastical Goverfunent. 137 

torily recalled to their duties. They were forbidden to 
ride forth to the wars, carry arms, and shed blood, and 
to live as laymen. The king's interference extended to 
matters strictly belonging to their provmce. By his own 
authority he altered, corrected, and, as he believed, re- 
formed and improved the offices of the Church. In the 
controversies of the day, he formed his opinion and ruled 
the conclusions of councils, cautiously, indeed, and with 
ecclesiastical learning to back him, but by authority of 
his own. In the question about images, which was so 
complicated by political difficulties, and had so much to 
do with finally separating the Greek and Latin Churches, 
he took his part, the part, it must be said, of moderation 
and sobriety. He rejected a council claiming to be 
oecumenical (Nicaea II. 787), and opposed the pope who 
had accepted it ; while he boldly attempted in a Frank 
council of his own (Frankfort, 792), and by the pen of 
his scholars and divines, to fix the opinion and usage of 
the Western Church. The most unceremonious pro- 
clamations of strict and unsparing discipline were ad- 
dressed to the bishops ; and articles of inquiry were sent 
about, detailed and minute, as to their knowledge of the 
elements of religion, the morality of their lives, their 
diligence in preaching, their capacity and that of their 
clergy to perform the offices of religion. They are to be 
asked, he says, in one of these visitation circulars — and 
the question is to be driven home — " What is the mean- 
ing of the Apostle's saying (2 Tim. ii. 4), ' No man that 
warreth, entangleth himself with the affairs of this life;' 
and to whom do the words apply?" 

Charles's idea of his office as king was deepened and 
enlarged when he became emperor. He then rose from 
being the king of the Franks and Lombards, to what the 
world of this day, and after it the middle ages, supposed 



138 Beginning of ihc Middle Ages. a. d. 

to be the unique and transcendent supremacy 

Claims of • u v 1 r r^ a . » 

ecciesi.istical inherited from Caesar Augustus. As enipe- 
aremperor! ^°^' °^ ^^^ PvOmans, he claimed to govern the 
Roman world, and all persons and things 
in it. As emperor, he claimed the pope himself as his 
subject. The pope was his father and guide in religion, 
and governed the Church by power not derived from 
man and according to a legislation of its own, yet sub- 
ject to his own visitatorial control. At the pope's hands 
he received his own imperial crown and anointing. But 
the election of the pope required the emperor's con- 
firmation ; the pope like every one else, had to take the 
oath of fidelity to the emperor ; the pope went through 
the ceremony, as it is expressed in unsuspicious con- 
temporary language, of "adoring" him at his corona- 
tion, after the custom of the eniperors of old. Pope Leo 
111. pleaded' before him; and Charles, in bidding his 
envoys exhort the pope to live honestly, to observe the 
canons, and to avoid simony, used the same force and 
freedom with which he exhorted his bishops. Charles » 
claim to interfere in religious matters, which he had pu. 
hign as king of the Franks and Lombards, was sensibly 
raised, both in extent and peremptoriness, when he be- 
came emperor. He conceived, and his age with him, 
that he had received from God, together with the in- 
heritance of the Caesars, the duty and of^ce of the Jew- 
ish kings, not only of protecting the Church of God, 
but of purifying it from evil, and makmg everyone in it, 
from the highest to the lowest, do his duty, and submit 
to the imperial authority and rebuke. 

This broad claim to superintend and regulate the 
policy, the government, the practice, and even the be- 
lief of the Church, with which the East had been long 
familiar, was new among the Teutonic rulers of the 



771-814- The Christian Empire. 139 

West. In Charles appeared for the first time, realized 
and complete, the mediaeval idea of the Roman empire- 
According to this idea, " the unity of the Christian em- 
pire reflected the unity of the Christian Church," and the 
empire had its supreme head, Cssar Augustus, as the 
Church had the successor and representative of St. 
Peter. In Charles's interpretation of the idea, the ulti- 
mate control of this twofold realm rested with the di- 
vinely appointed Caesar; where there was a conflict of 
judgment it was for his authority to prev'^ail. The re- 
vival of the empire was the pope's doing, and for a long 
time the popes sought in vain to undo what in a time of 
need they had too hastily sanctioned. But to undo was 
beyond their power. Men took different sides in the 
great question which arose out of the idea of the empire ; 
but the idea had struck deep root ; it was the idea at 
once of Frederick II. and Dante, and of Gregory VII, 
and Boniface VIII. The precedent set by Charles, and 
the fierce debates arising out of it, affected the whole 
history of the middle ages, and even of the centuries 
which followed the Reformation ; nor is its eventful 
significance exhausted yet. In the great conflicts between 
Church and State both parties have sought arguments 
from it. The governments of Europe have found in it 
an armory of precedents to limit or to extinguish the 
liberties of the Church : while in the origin and incident* 
of the revived empire, and in the new place of the pa- 
pacy which followed on this revival, the champions of 
the pope have seen proofs of the theory which made him 
the master of kings and laws. 

Charles was keenly alive to the depressed 
state of knowledge and of general cultiva encourage, 

tion in his age, and to the contrast in regard ment of 

° ^ learning. 

to literature and theolog}' between his own 



I40 Beginning of the Middle A^^es. a/d. 

times and the great days before him. Early in his reign 
he collected about him in his palace the best scholars he 
could attract, and made them his familiar friends. The 
most considerable of them was — like the great German 
missionary of the previous generation, Boniface — an Eng- 
lishman. Alcwin came over from the school of York in 
782, and remained, with a short interval, on the continent 
till his death in 804. By such help Charles tried to im- 
prove his own knowledge, and to raise the standard 
of acquirement round him. Records of the conversa- 
tions and discussions which went on between the king 
and his " palace school " have been preserved in Alcwin's 
writings. They show the almost childish confusions 
and affectations of reviving knowledge ; but they also 
show the manly interest felt in the task of inquiry and 
self-improvement. The king and his companions fur- 
nished themselves with names, partly from the Bible^ 
partly from Latin literature ; Charles was David, and 
there was a Nathanael and a Bezaleel ; Alcwin was 
Flaccus Albinus, with a Homer, a ]\Icpsus, a Flavius 
Damoetas ; and for the ladies of the palace, the sisters 
and daughters of Charles, there were the names of Lucia, 
Columba, Delia, Eulalia. They employed their mother 
wit and their curiosity on such learning as was within 
their reach relating to the processes of thought and the 
powers of speech, the laws of numbers and sound, the 
motions of the heavenly bodies ; and they called it logic, 
grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, music and astronomy, 
Charles learned to speak Latin with facility, and he 
understood better than he spoke, Greek ; in his native 
Frankish German he was a vigorous and impressive 
speaker, and the splendour and usefulness of Latin did 
not shake his allegiance to his mother tongue. He was 
passionately fond of the old German songs and lays; 



7 7 1 -8 1 4- Encouragement of Learning. 141 

He attempted a German grammar, which means proba- 
bly that, hke Otfrid, the translator of the Gospels in the 
next generation, he attempted the then hopeless task of 
grasping, under rules like those of Latin, the varying 
spoken dialects of his kingdom. He tried late in life, 
but without success, to acquire what was then the pro- 
fessional art of writing. He was a severe critic of the 
reading and singing in his chapel. It was his custom to 
be read to at meals ; and his favourite book was St. 
Augustine's " City of God," which, with its grand sweep- 
ing generalizations, and its religious sense of the presence 
of God in the history and development of mankind, 
answered to his own lofty view of the work to which he 
had been called. 

In promoting the improvement of learning, Charles 
showed the same eagerness of person as he did in 
politics, or war, or hunting. Utterly dis- 
regardful of trouble, and untiring in what he Measures 

° » o f-,r pro- 

did himself, he called on his bishops and motmg 

1111 1 1 1 1 learning. 

abbots both to learn themselves and to 
enforce learning among their subordinates. Ordinances 
were issued calling for schools to be set up in the great 
sees and monasteries. They arose, or were quickened 
into activity where already founded ; and they produced 
their fruits in the next generation, and kept hope alive 
amid great disasters. Colonies were sent from the 
schools and monasteries of Gaul into Germany ; thus 
New Corbey in the conquered Saxon land was founded 
by converted Saxons, who had been trained at Corbey 
on the*Somme. At Osnabriick, in view of greater inter- 
course with Constantinople, Greek was specially ordered 
to be taught. The increasing list of learned names 
w'hich begin to appear from this century, almost all of 
them pupils of the new German schools, shows that 



142 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

Charles's efforts were not altogether in vain. But it was 
easier to command and even show the way, than to be 
obeyed ; and even to be obe^^ed, than to alter the inher- 
ited conditions of his age. Yet Charles was as practical 
as he was enthusiastic and resolute. In this, as in other 
things, the wants of men, and the necessity of supplying 
them, were insisted upon by the master spirit of the 
time, with such manifest truth and reason, that though 
the change was imperceptible and was thwarted by 
countless adverse influences, a great change had really 
set in. And encouragement was given to those who, in 
those wild and perplexed times, believed that men were 
meant for something better and higher than a life of 
fighting, of personal rivalries, and of coarse enjoyment. 

Charles's great qualities were alloyed with great faults. 
With the excellences of a strong nature, he had the fail- 
ings and self-delusions of the strong. Great 
Chii les's 3^g Y^Q was, both in what he aimed at, and in 

great taults. ' 

what he accomplished, he could not be 
above his age; he had the rudeness of a barbarian en- 
deavouring to rise above barbarism. Rude, as Peter the 
Great in like circumstances was rude, yet Charles's was 
the rudeness of a larger and more genial nature, and of 
a nobler ambition. But Charles was one of those who 
think they know enough, and have strength enough to 
mould the world at their will. With strong affections 
and wide sympathies, he was imperious and masterful. 
He saw no limits to his power to correct and mend, and 
no limits to his right to exerci >e it ; and his too ambitious 
and sometimes unscrupulous attem^.ts sowed the*seeds 
of mischief to come. Clement and placable as he was 
in peace, his wars were ferocious, and his policy after 
conquest unsparing; yet it was the ferocity which often 
since his time has been judged the only weapon to ex- 



7 7 1-8 1 4- Extent of CJiarles' s Kingdom. 1 43 

tinguish obstinate and dangerous resistance. He was in 
earnest in his religion, and there vvas much in it not only 
of earnestness but of intelligence. But it was not com- 
plete or deep enough to exclude that waywardness and 
inconsistency of moral principle, and that incapacity to 
control passion, which belonged to the time. We do not 
hear of the foul murders and treasons of the Merovingian 
times ; but his court was full of the gross licentiousness 
of the period. He was not superior to it himself; there 
were many evil stories about him ; and tenderly attached 
as he was to his children, he was not happy in their 
training and fortunes. 

The Frank kingdom which Charles had received from 
his father included Gaul from the Loire to the Rhine, 
with an ill-established sovereignty over the 

° ^ Extent of 

German tribes between the Rhine, the Elbe CnarLs's 

, , T T T-v 1 1 . 1 • kingdom. 

and the Upper Danube, and over the mipa- 
tient Latinized population of Aquitaine. During the 
forty-seven years of Charles's reign it had grown into a 
resemblance of the dominion of the Caesars. When 
Charles died, its borders were the Ebro in Spain, the 
Elbe in Germany, or beyond the Elbe, the Eyder, and 
the Bavarian Enns, if not the Hungarian Theiss, to the 
south-east. All of what is now Germany west of the 
Bohemian mountains, not merely acknov/ledged in him 
an over-lord, but v/as really won to his rule. He secured, 
what his father had only fought to secure, the submission 
of Latin Aquitaine, and the submission, at last complete 
and sincere, of the stout-hearted and obstinate Saxons. 
There had been one independent Christian kingdom on 
the mainland of the West, that of the Lombards at Pavia ; 
it had disappeared. He had wrested from them all Italy, 
which was beginning to be called by their name, from 
the Alps to Calabria, and the king of The Franks pre- 



144 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

served the memory of his conquest by adding to his title 
that of king of the Lombards. His more indefinite claims 
to sovereignty or tribute extended beyond these limits — 
to Corsica and perhaps Sardinia, to the lands between 
the Danube and the head of the Adriatic, to the barbar- 
ous tribes of Slaves, eastward of his proper border as far 
as the Vistula. From the ocean to the mountains of the 
Bohemians and the plains of Hungary and Poland, from 
the Baltic till he met the Arabs in Spain, the Greeks in 
Calabria, Sicily and Dalmatia, the continental Europe of 
that time owned his sway and formed his empire. It 
seemed to be the centre of all authority, the bond of 
union among the nations. 

Charles was one of those men, who in person and out- 
ward bearing answer to their place. Tall, robust, well- 
proportioned in body, with great strength and activity, 
simple in dress, bright and keen-eyed, clear but shrill in 
voice, commanding in feature, hale in his old age, he 
lived with unbroken health till his last few years, greatly 
despising physicians and remedies. He was a great 
eater, but sparing of wine, and relied on starvation as 
his only medicine. He was a great rider and swimmer, 
passionately fond of bathing, and delighting in the hot 
springs and pools of his favourite Aachen. To the very 
last he was a mighty and untiring hunter. After an 
autumn spent in violent exercise, the winter of 813-81.-1 
was at length too much for him. Fever and pleurisy 
attacked him, and he would only meet them by starving 
himself. On the morning of January 28, 814, he died. 
He was buried the same day in the stately basilica \^hich 
he had built hard by his palace at Aachen or Aix-la- 
Chapelle.and adorned with marbles brought from Rome 
and Ravenna. He was laid in the tomb which he had 
made for himself. On the gilded arch beneath which 



8 14. Death of Charles. 145 

he lay, was his effigy and the inscription : "Under this 
tomb is laid the body of Charles, great and orthodox 
Emperor, who nobly enlarged the kingdom of the.Franks, 
and for 47 years reigned prosperously. He died, being 
seventy years old, in the year of our Lord 814, the 7th 
Indiction, the fifth day before the Kalends of February." 
There, in the vault below, he was left, sitting as in life 
on a marble throne, dressed in his imperial robes, with 
his horn, his sword, and his book of the Gospels on his 
knee. And there, says the legend, in the last years of 
the tenth century, he was found by Otto III., who ven- 
tured to open the tomb, and who beheld the undecayed 
form of the great emperor of the Franks. 

For the first time since the fall of the Roman empire 
in the West, a king, an emperor, had arisen in the new 
nations, to rule with glory; a conqueror, a legislator, a 
founder of social order, a restorer of religion. His un- 
broken success, his wide dominion, his consecrated au- 
thority, his fame spread to the farthest bounds of the 
world, recalled the great kings of the Bible, the great 
Caesars of Rome. What made him so great was, that 
his aim was not only to conquer, and overthrow, and 
enjoy, but that he laboured so long and so resolutely 
with deliberate purpose for the benefit of men. It was 
all the more wonderful and impressive, from the disorder 
which had been before, from the disorder which for a 
long time followed. His reign was a romantic episode, 
interposed in tlie midst of what seemed normal and irre- 
mediable anarchy. The unique splendour of his reign, 
which even we with our cooler judgments see to have 
been so remarkable, naturally dazzled the imaginations 
of his age. The haze of legend and poetry soon enve- 
loped his image in the memory of the nations. The 
great German king and Caesar was transformed into a 



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The Carolingians. 147 

Latin hero of romance, the theme of the Norman" Chant 
de Roland," and of the Itahan poets of the court of Fer- 
rara, Bojardo and Ariosto. More strangely still, as the 
great champion and legislator and benefactor of the 
Church, he grew, though personally so lax in his rules of 
hfe, into the reputation of a saint. He was never for- 
mally canonized; but his name and his doings appear 
in the catalogue of the Saints ; his altar was frequent at 
one time in Germany and the Low Countries ; and to 
this day, his title to saintship is still acknowledged by 
altar, and image, and festival, in the churches of the 
Lower Valais. 

His glory was the prelude to strange reverses in the 
fortunes of his posterity. Strong as he was, the times 
were yet stronger; and the children of Charles proved 
even less worthy of their origin than the children of 
Clovis. For they started from a higher point ; and they 
sank at last almost as low as the Merovingians. 



CHAPTER VHL 

THE C A RO LI NGI A NS . 

1. Louis the Pious and his sons. — 2. The Northmen. 
3. Fall of the Carolingian lines. 

It seemed as if under Charles the Franks were to be to 
the new world of Christendom what the Remans had 
been to the old world of heathendom. It seemed so. 
But before Charles died, he showed that he felt it was 
hardly to be, and that his image of empire had been but 
his own personal achievement, and was linked to his 
own character and life. Two forces opposed the conti- 



148 Beginning of the Middle Ages. 

nuation of his empire, and he recognized them both: 
the permanent conditions of nationality, and the acci- 
dents of his own family. He saw that his dominion was 
made up of discordant elements, the German, the Gaul, 
and the Italian ; the true German Frank of the East, 
the Frank of the Main and the Rhine, the Moselle and 
Meuse; and the Romanizing Frank of the West, the 
Frank of Paris and Rouen, of Orleans and Tours, with 
the Romanized Celt of the South, of Bordeaux, Tou- 
louse, and Lyons. Three sons, the sons of one of the 
earliest of his wives, Hildegard, had grown up in 
the companionship of his wars, and had shared with 
him in his enterprizcs of conquest and rule. The 
eldest should succeed to his position, by right of birth 
or by national choice, was not the assumption of 
those days among the Franks. The ideas and pre- 
cedents of the kingdom prescribed a division of the 
inheritance ; and Charles accepted, as of course, the 
parting of his empire. His one care was that it should 
be a peaceable one ; but he never seems to have 
thought of keeping it together, as he had held it, in one 
hand. Eight years before his death, in order to avert 
discord and quarrel between his sons, he made a solemn 
act of partition (806). Charles, the eldest, was to rule 
in the North over the old kingdom of the Franks, from 
the Elbe to the Loire, Neustria and Austrasia, and the 
German lands beyond the Rhine, with North Burgundy, 
the Valley of the Rhone, and Aosta, one of the southern 
keys of the Alps. Pipin, the second, had the East and 
South-east, Bavaria, and " Italy, which is also Lom- 
bardy," with the southern bank of the Danube, and up to 
the sources of the Rhine. Louis had the south, Aquitaine 
and Gascony, the Spanish March, Provence, and South- 
ern Burgundy, and the valleys of the Western Alps, 



EUROPE 

time of Charles the Great 




The Carolingia?is. 149 

Savoy, Maurienne, and Tarentaise. To each — that each, 
it was said, might aid the other, really that each might 
have his own access to Italy and Rome — was assigned 
his own pass over the Alps; to Charles by the St. Ber- 
nard, to Pipin by Chur and the Septimer, to Louis by the 
Mont Cenis and Susa. The contingency of the death 
of any of them was provided for ; and rules were care- 
fully laid down for the questions which, in the existing 
state of society, were the most usual causes or pretexts 
of quarrels. In making this arrangement, Charles must 
have acknowledged to himself that the great achieve- 
ment of his own life was not likely, except from unfore- 
seen chances, to be repeated, and that he was in truth 
founding three great and separate kingdoms, for which 
all that he could do was to try and keep them allied and 
at peace. Yet he might have thought that the Germans, 
in the great race of Franks, were henceforth to lead the 
world. 

But none of these things were to be, not even peace 
in his family. In the few years between the act of par- 
tition and his death, two of the three sons among whom 
he had so carefully divided his realms, had died, and left 
their claims to be a source of endless strife, feud, and 
war to a younger generation. And that leadership of the 
Germans during the last three centuries, which seemed 
secured to them by the revived empire was, by the re- 
sults of the policy of the greatest of German leaders, 
finally checked and abolished. By the destruction of 
the Lombard, which meant a Teutonic, ascendancy in 
Italy, by the decisive separation of the Western Frark 
kingdom from the Eastern Franks, and by the creation 
of a great Italian power in the reconstructed papacy, the 
independence, and then the preponderance and triumph 
of Latin influences in southern Europe were made sure- 



150 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 806. 

Charles aspired to put his Germans at the head of the 
rising civihzation of the West. But they were still too 
rude for the task. And exactly as his own efforts to 
awaken a desire for order and cultivation were success- 
ful, it was felt that not force, but trained and experienced 
reason, not the gifts which had made the Germans irre- 
sistible, but those which were the inheritance of the 
weaker Latins, were the foundations of power, and the 
guardians of peace, law, and hope, in society. 

The wild world which Charles the Great had tried to 
tame broke out again into disorder under his son, Louis, 
i\:i\-nQdL Pious , der Fronime, le Debonnaire, the kindly and 
religious, as we should perhaps name' him, " the Good." 
Charles's aim had been to create a strong central power, 
which, leaving each land with its own institutions and 
laws, should everywhere moderate and control, should en- 
force justice, should support religion and civilization, and 
should encourage learning; and he thought that he had 
done so by reviving the Roman empire in the West, and 
placing it among the Franks. Still holding the authority 
of emperor, Charles, as has been already said, towards 
the end of his reign (806), following both imperial and 
Merovingian precedents, appointed three of his sons, 
Charles, Pipin, and Louis, to be kings under him ; laying 
down provisions for maintaining the peace and unity of 
the one Frank empire. But his foresight was of no avail. 
Pipin in 810 and Charles in 811 both died before him. 
Then \\2 devolved his imperial dignity, by his own 
authority, in 813, a year before his death, on Louis of 
Aquitaine, the survivor of his three kingly sons. Thus, 
at Charles's death (814). Louis came at once into his 
father's place as emperor, and was welcomed in it by 
the unanimous consent of the Franks. Two years after 
he was crowned at Reims by the pope, Stephen V. (816). 



A. D. 814-840. Louis the Pious. 151 

Louis followed his father's example by associating his 
eldest son Lothar, as emperor with himself, and by ap- 
pointing his other two sons, Pepin and Louis, 
and his nephew, Bernard, over the outlying ^a is as^o- 
portions of the empire — Aquitaine, Bavaria, sons ia his 

• 11 J govtrn- 

and Italy, or as it was sometunes called, ment. 
Lombardy. For sixteen years all went on, begauiings. 
as in Charles's times. Louis, popular with 
his subjects, gentle-jninded, for the most part a lover of 
mercy and justice, but also active and brave, sedulously 
followed in his father's steps in legislation and govern- 
ment. He was busy with reforms both in Church and 
State. His ordinances swell the Capitularies. From all 
quarters ambassadors came to him, with presents, pro- 
posals for peace, demands for assistance — from the 
Greeks, the Saracens, the Bulgarians, the Danes, the 
Eastern Slaves, the popes. The old success attended 
for the most part the military expeditions of the Franks. 
An attempt to make Italy independent under young 
Bernard, his nephew, was at once and pitilessly sup- 
pressed (817). Bernard's eyes were put out, and he died 
soon afterwards (818). More formidable revolts in the 
border-lands beyond the Elbe, in the Slave countries 
beyond the Inn, on the Drave and the Save, in Brittany, 
in Gascony, were vigorously met and put down. And 
yet in the midst of his power and glory Louis was mind- 
ful of the frailty of human greatness, and the imperfec- 
tion of human action. More than once his conscience 
smote him. At a great meeting at Attigny, near Laon, 
822, like the Emperor Theodosius, he voluntarily hum- 
bled himself before his assembled chiefs and bishops, 
publicly confessing his offences against those whom, like 
his nephew Bernard, he had treated unjustly and cruelly. 
Thus, with a milder and purer character, Louis seemed 



152 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

to keep up the vigour of his father's rule, and to have 
inherited his father's power and fortune. Never had the 
boundaries of the empire been so extended, or its au- 
thority appeared so commanding. Without his father's 
fauhs, he had reached to more than even his father's 
greatness. But it was the illusion of only sixteen years. 
It was true that he had not his father's faults ; but it was 
proved at last that he had not his father's strength. The 
show of prosperity and success durjng the first half of 
his reign was in the latter half to end in gloomy and 
hopeless confusion. 

The explosion came at last. Louis, left a widower in 
818, married, in the following year (819), the fair and am- 
bitious Bavarian Judith, the daughter of Welf, 
sec^^Ki^'^ ^ Count of Altorf, on the Lake of Lucerne, the 
hS yoSng- ancestor of m.any famous lines : among them 
est son those of Estc, of the Guelfs of Bavaria and 

Charles. 

Quarrels in Saxony, of the Plantagencts, of the House of 
'ii'iy- Brunswick. In 823 she bore a son, named 
after the great emperor, Charles, and to be distinguished 
from him afterwards as Charles the Bald. This roused at 
once the jealousy of the emperor's first family, the 
three sons who shared his government. The empire 
was henceforth filled with their intrigues and revolts. 
Their counsellors and partizans, the turbulent nobles of 
their kingdoms, threw themselves into the quarrel with 
rancour ; and the attacks on the Empress Judith have 
been compared to the insults of the revolutionary parties 
in Paris against Marie Antoinette. The emperor was 
bent on carving out a kingdom for his youngest and fa- 
vourite son ; but the partition betwen the elder sons was 
regarded by them as final, and whatever was given to 
Charles must be given at their expense. In 829 the em- 
peror took from the portion of one of them, Louis "the 



823-833- Louis the Fious. The Liigenfeld. 153 

German," Alamannia.Rhaetia, and Burgundy beyond the 
Jura, corresponding roughly to Suabia and Switzerland, 
and created it into a kingdom for Charles, a child of six 
years old. From that time the empire of Charles the 
Great began to break up. In the following^ 

* ^ *= Empire 

year, 830, the elder sons, with Lothar, his begins to 
father's trusted associate in the empire, at ^ "^' 

their head, set up in Paris the standard of revolt. Louis 
was surprised by his sons, and together with the empress 
was imprisoned, threatened, ill-treated. He was restored 
as suddenly ; for the brothers distrusted one another, 
and the feeling was strong for the emperor in the Eastern 
and German provinces. His rebellious sons were lightly 
punished, and again they rose up against him. This 
time they had won over the pope, Gregory IV. to their 
side ; and he accompanied their united armies against 
their father (833). The two hosts for several days faced 
each other on the plains of Elsass, near Colmar. Neither 
side would attack ; but communications freely passed 
between them, the pope offering himself as mediator. 
The end was that the emperor's adherents were persuad- 
ed to desert him. His army broke up without fighting. 
Bishops and counts passed over, one after another, to 
his sons, and he was left with the empress and her son 
to the mercy of the rebels. The name of ^j^^ u Y\^\d. 
this long-remembered scene of treachery ^^ Lies," 833. 
was changed from the " Rothfeld," to the " Liigen- 
feld," Campus Me!idacii,\h.Q. '' Field of Lies.'' The sons 
endeavoured to force their father to abdicate ; but he 
was resolute in his refusal. They imprisoned him in 
the monastery of St. Medard, near Soissons. At length, 
in an assembly of bishops and nobles, he was formally 
deposed. But the sentence had scarcely been pro- 
nounced before the reaction began. The brothers, as 



154 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 833-840. 

usual, quarrelled. As before, the Germans of the East- 
ern provinces were ready to support him, though they 
had deserted him at the Liigenfcld. Once more Louis 
was released, his deposition cancelled, and he was again 
emperor ; once more he forgave and made peace with 
his rebellious sons. But confidence and quiet were not 
restored. Partition after partition — ten are coun':ed dur- 
ing his reign — showed the emperor's unscrupulous-eager- 
ness to increase the share of his youngest son ; he added 
to Alamannia, Neustria, and, on Pipings death, Aqui- 
taine. Father was still in arms against son, and brother 
against brother. The empire, so prosperous while united, 
began to suffer from external attacks. Northmen and 
Slaves became more troublesome and audacious. At 
length, still victorious, but victorious over his own chil- 
dren, with a threatening future, and amid natural calam- 
_ , , ities and portents, Louis the Pious, the 

Death of ^ ^ . , 

Louis, Jane Kindly, died in one 01 his palaces on the 
20, 40- Rhine, and was buried at IMetz, leaving dis- 

cord among his sons, and his great heritage shaken and 
in confusion. 

The last ten years of Louis' empire had made it clear 
that the power to govern its turbulent elements had de- 
parted with its founder. And from this time (830-840), 
the artificial force which had kept it together being 
removed, the contrast and opposition between its great 
national divisions became more and more distinct and 
sharp. The process of disintegration began, and it was 
probably in the nature of things inevitable. But it was 
greatly helped forward by violent and incurable dis- 
sensions between the brothers and their children, to 
whom Louis had left his empire. Lothar, the eldest, 
his associate in the empire, and already crowned at 
Rome, ambitious, cunning, unscrupulous, claimed for 



A. D. 841- Battle of Fontcnailles. 155 

himself the whole imperial inheritance, and the supre- 
macy which his father and grandfather had held. He 
was the centre of the old Frank interest, the local Frank 
allegiance, the old Frank claims to rule. He held the 
north, the Rhine, and Italy ; he was master at once of 
Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle, and of Rome, the capitals of 
the new and the old empire. But in the east and west, 
German Bavaria and Latin Aquitaine, always impatient 
of Frank supremacy, had each now their own king, 
sons, like Lothar, of the late emperor. In Bavaria and 
the neighbouring lands, Louis, named the German, 
had been able to defy his father ; his power and influence 
had become strongly rooted. In the west, Charles the 
Bald, though his claims in Aquitaine were disputed by 
a cousin, was gradually becoming formidable in the 
countries between the Loire, the Seine, and the Rhone. 
The trial of strength, in such conditions, could not fail 
to come. There was the usual prelude, like as of feints 
in a game, of treacherous negotiations and feeble con- 
flicts. At length, Louis the German and Charles, with 
the Latinized forces of the West, united in earnest 
against their elder brother. The bloody battle of Fonte- 
nailles, or Fontenoy [Fofitanetiwt] near Auxerre, a year 
after their father's death (June 25, 841), a battle famous 
in those days for the fierceness of the fighting, and for the 
greatness of the slaughter, ended in the overthrow of 
Lothar, and made it clear that his brothers could hold 
their own against him. The battle of Fontcnailles was 
the decisive proof that the unity of Frank dominion, 
shaken under the Emperor Louis, was hopeless under 
the Emperor Lothar. The two brothers, Louis and 
Charles, with more steadiness than was then usual, main- 
tained their alliance, and confirmed it the following year 
(844) by the memorable " oath of Strasburg," taken by 

M 



156 Beglnnuig of the Middle Ages. a. d. 841-843. 

themselves and their two armies, by Louis' army in 
German [Teudisca, Deutsch) by Charles in " Roman, " 
[Ro7na7ia), a language no longer Latin, but not yet 
French. The result of their success was at length 
acknowledged and sanctioned by the treaty of Verdun 
(843), the most important and substantially permanent 
of the numberless partitions which had been and were 
to be. For it was the starting point of the new arrange- 
ment of Western Europe, following on the dissolution 
of the fabric which the great Charles had built up. 
Changes, redistributions, subdivisions, unions of the 
most varied kinds were still to be attempted. But, hence- 
forth, the broad lines of division were traced, which the 
subsequent history of Europe, in spite of all attempts to 
obliterate them, have only deepened. 

Speaking roughly we may say that by the treaty of 
Vendun, and by the confirmation of it, at Thionville 
Treat of (^44)' ^.nd Mccrscn (847), Louis the German 

Verdun, took the Eastern and Gcrm.an Franks, and 

Charles the Bald, the Western and Latinized 
Franks. Lothar, besides the imperial dignity and what- 
ever claims went with it, had the Middle portion of the 
Frank kingdom, between the Rhine eastwards, the 
Scheldt, Meuse, and Rhone westwards, with Italy, the 
emperor's special share. The realm of Lothar, the 
emperor, was, says Palgrave, "built upon Italy." The 
two imperial residences, Rome and Aachen, " the 
centres of the two great Cis-Alpine and Trans- Alpine 
crown lands, were conjoined by " an unbroken and 
continuous territory, including all varieties of soil, 
climate, and production, the wine and oil of the South, 
the harvests and pastures of the North.'' Once, and 
once only, again, i/.fter the disruption of Verdun, the 
three realms were for a short time under one emperor. 



A. D, 843. Partition of Ver'dun. 157 

Charles the Fat, (884-887) ; but his hand was too feeble 
to hold them. The inherent tendencies to separate 
national life were irresistible. The new world grew too 
fast, and became too large, for any constitutional author- 
ity of those days to manage, and for anything but the 
rarest personal qualities to keep together. Charles the 
Great's design was more than once attempted, but was 
never again accomplished. " The history of modern 
Europe," says Sir F. Palgrave, "is an exposition of the 
treaty of Verdun." 

With the breaking up of the West into these great 
national divisions, occasioned by the family feuds of the 
Carolingians, the interest of their history is 
extinguished. For a time they continued ^^'^'^y ^ , 

* . '. . striics of the 

at the head of these divisions. They gave Caroiin- 
their names to some of tnem ; we hear of a 
Karli7igia, and a more enduring Lotharingia, now nar- 
rowed down to Lothringen or Lorraine. Each member 
of the family was for ever endeavouring for his own ad- 
vantage to undo the partition of Verdun, in whole or in 
part. But to this their efforts were confined. The po- 
litical and administrative aims of the founders of their 
house, of Pipin and Charles, disappear. The legisla- 
tive record, the Capitularies, so full under Charles the 
Great and Louis the Pious, thins out with a few import- 
ant documents under Charles the Bald, and after him 
comes to an end, leaving less trace than the legislation 
of the later Merovingians. Their history becomes a 
dizzy and unintelligible spectacle of monotonous confu- 
sion — a scene of unrestrained treachery, of insatiable 
and blind rapacity. No son is obedient or loyal to his 
father; no brother can trust his brother; no uncle spares 
his nephews. Members of the same family, their greedy 
envy of each other's possessions kept them in an unva- 



158 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. viii. 

rying round of attempts at unscrupulous spoliation, suc- 
cessful or unsuccessful. There were rapid alternations 
of fortune, rapid changing of sides ; there was universal 
distrust, and universal reliance on falsehood and crime. 
But nothing, not even the barbarians of the North and 
East desolating their cities and provinces, could inter- 
rupt the infatuated passion to overreach and encroach. 
While the Northmen were piercing to the heart of Neu- 
stria by the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne, Charles 
the Bald, unable with his utmost efforts to check them, 
never could resist the temptation, when it offered, to 
filch a province from a neighbouring kinsman, and he 
in like manner, when his hands were full, became the 
natural victim of their greediness. 

Yet the men themselves, some of them at least, such 
as Louis the Gerinan, and even Charles the Bald, were 
of a higher stamp than the Merovingians ; and, to the 
last, we find among them men of spirit and vigour , 
capable of striking a heavy blow and winning a success 
over a powerful opponent, But their energy was fitful 
and ill-applied. They had lost sight of all high aims 
and large purposes. The times were against them, and 
were too strong for them; and there were too many of 
them. Their rival pretensions were extravagant and 
irreconcilable. The dream of re-uniting their great 
ancestor's empire was ever before their eyes, and their 
capacity never reached to this. They were but able to 
balance and check one another. And thus their his- 
tory became a repetition of the disorder and dislocations 
of the Merovingian times. Pretenders struck in, carv- 
ing out new kingdoms or dukedoms from the older di- 
visions. The imperial, and then the kingly title, and at 
last the family itself, dies out, in one line after another, 
first, in that of the Emperor Lothar (Louis H. f 875), 



CHAP. VIII. Quan-els among the Carolingians. 159 

next in that of Louis the German (Louis the Child f 911), 
and last in that of Charles the Bald (Louis the Lazy f 987] ; 
and each line ends in some feeble representative, who 
passes away, unhonoured, perhaps deposed and impri- 
soned. The family, more numerous than the Merovin- 
gians, confined themselves, like the Merovingians, to 
but few names. In the house of Clovis, almost every 
one was a Clovis, a Clothar, a Theoderic, a Childebert, 
a Chilperic, a Sigibert, a Cagobert. In the house of 
Pipin, almost every one was a Pipin, or Charles, or Car- 
loman, or, with the altered or modernized forms of the 
older names, a Ludvig (Louis), or a Lothar. But after 
the glory of their founder had departed, history can only 
distinguish them at last by some scornful nickname — 
Charles the Fat, Charles the Simple, Louis the Stam- 
merer, Louis the Child, Louis the Lazy, the "Do- 
nothing." 

Of the three sons who survived Louis the Pious, Lo- 
thar, the emperor, died first (855), and his family was 
extinguished within the twenty years that 
his two brothers outlived him. His king- |ouL°the 
dom was divided between three sons : Louis l^iO'S. 

I. Lothar, 

II. the Emperor, Lothar, and Charles. The Emperor ; 
threebrothers quarrelled among themselves, German; 
and were assailed by their uncles. They the^Bafdr 
all died without male heirs, the elder, the 
Emperor Louis II., being the survivor; and at each 
death, whether of brothers or nephews, and whether 
children were left or not, the moment was seized by the 
others to snatch or divide the vacant share, which usual- 
ly had been contested in life. The middle portion of 
the P>ank dominion, to the northern part of which, 
along the course of the Meuse and the Moselle as far as 
the Scheldt, the second Lothar gave the name of Lotha- 



l6o Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. viii. 

ringia, — that middle kingdom which the great Charles 
supposed could arbitrate between East and West, and 
the idea of which, after repeated vain attempts, was 
revived, again in vain, in the 15th century by the French 
house of Burgundy, — was, immediately on Lothar's 
death, torn in two by his uncles, Louis the German and 
Charles the Bald (870). At the death of Louis 11. the 
Emperor (875), Charles the Bald succeeded 

1. Failure ....y..._ j-j 

of Lot'rar's m anticipatmg Louis the German, and seized 

peforLDuis . what was specially the imperial portion, 

11.1875. Italy, gaining from Pope John VIIL the 

imperial crown (875), which he received like his great 

namesake on Christmas day, at St, Peter's, But he wore 

it only for a short time. Three successive years (875- 

877) saw the extinction of the line of the first Lothar, and 

the death of his two brothers — Louis {876), and Charles 

(877). One of the main lines of the Carolingian stock 

was gone ; two v/ereleft. The house of Louis 

^Lnu?s)he the German, who is said to have been the 

German, wisest and most iust of the brothers, ruled 

840-911. J ' 

Charles at last over all the German lands to the 

Emp ror, eastward of an irregular boundary line, 

■*"' " drawn from the mouth of the Scheldt to the 

Jura. According to the custom of his race, he had to 
encounter the rebellions of his three sons, who had been 
invested with the government of different parts of his 
kingdom ; but he vv'as able to hold his own against them. 
The survivor of them, Charles the Fat, for a moment 
raised the hopes of his subjects. For a brief interval he 
was Emperor, and united under his rule all the realms 
of Charles the Great, But the promise of reviving power 
was a treacherous one. Health and vigour gave way 
before the difficulties of the times and the intrigues of 
younger kinsmen ; eleven years after his father's death 



The Three Lines of the Carolingians. i6i 






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1 62 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. viii. 

he was deposed (887) and he died in prison in the mon- 
^ ., ^ asterv of Reichenau in an island of the lake 

Failure of 

line of Louis of Constance (888). The litie of Louis the 

the German. ^ . , , , ..... 

Louis the German was continued only by an lUegiti- 

Chiid, t 9"- mate nephew Arnulf, duke of Carinthia, who 
took from his uncle Charles both the kingdom of Ger- 
many and the imperial dignity ; and it finally died out 
ill Arnulf's feeble son, Louis the Child (899-911). 

Thus within a century from the death of Charles the 

Great, one main branch alone survived of his house : 

the line of Charles the Bald, among the 

3^ House of Western Franks, in Gaul. It dragged out a 

Charles the _ _ ^^ 

Bald, longer existence, but with no greater glory 

'^°~ ^^' than the two which had failed. Charles, 

his father's youngest born and favourite son by his 
second marriage with the ambitious Welf princess, 
Judith, was early taught not to trust even his brothers. 
He had to win his way through great difficulties to the 
kingdom which at last he secured. He was not without 
some of his famous namesake's gifts. He inherited 
Charles's literary tastes ; perhaps, some of his ideas of 
law and government. But all high political aims were 
subordinated to his restless and unscrupulous eagerness 
to enlarge his borders. While he could not save them 
from the ravages of the Northmen, his reign was spent 
in trying to add to dominions which he could not govern. 
Like Charles the Fat after him, he seemed for a moment 
to have succeeded, only to prove the impossibility of suc- 
cess. For two years he bore (875-877), amid humiliation 
and disaster, the coveted name of emperor. But he 
left no stronger or more fortunate posterity than his 
brothers. His son, Louis the Stammerer, his successor 
in Gaul, died two years after him (879). The two elder 
sons of this Louis saw their Western realm broken up, 



CHAP. VIII. 



Charles the Bald. 



163 



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164 Beginni?tg of the Middle Ages. chap. viii. 

and a new kingdom created in Burgundy and Provence 
(879), by a stranger Boso, who had married a Carolin- 
gian princess. They both of them passed away, 
amid disaster and ill-fortune, within seven years from 
their grandfather's death ; the kingdom of the West 
Franks was for a moment transferred to the German, 
Charles the Fat ; and after his death, the claims of their 
younger brother, the posthumous son of Louis the 
Stammerer, Charles, named the Simple, were set aside 
Charles the ^Y ^ powerful party among the Franks, in 

Simple, favour of a new man. This was the deliv- 

879-928. 

Rival Kings erer of Paris from the Northmen, Count Odo 

or Eudes, the son of a warrior of unknown 
origin, Robert the Strong, the ancestor of the line of 
Capet. On the death of Odo, Charles was again ac- 
knowledged (899} ; but the allegiance of the Franks to 
the Carolinginian house was shaken, and the family and 
realm of Charles the Bald had to bear the brunt of the 
great revolution in Western Europe, caused by the in- 
trusion of a new barbarian element into the civilization 
of Charles the Great. 

The date of the treaty of Verdun (843) marks also the 
beginning of a series of events, only second in import- 
ance to the empire of Charles the Great, and 

Invasions of . . , , . 

the Nor emen of lastmg influence not only on the history 
andUTe^"^ ofGaul and the Franks, but on the history 

Continent. ^f j^uj-Qpe and the world. This was the 
second stage of the barbarian invasions the assaults and 
settlements of the Norsemen, or, as we call them in Eng- 
land, the Danes, which were coincident with the break- 
ing up of Charles's empire. They were not the only bar- 
barian invasions of the time. On the Mediterranean 
coasts, the Saracens were, and long continued to be, 
threatening and sometimes dangerous. On the Eastern 





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1 66 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 800-900. 

border, the heathen Saxons, the more numerous Slave 
tribes, with some tribes of the Turanian or Turkish stock, 
had long been formidable. The great military achieve- 
ment of Charles the Great had been to subdue them. 
The German tribes had been more or less Christianized 
and assimilated to their more civilized Frank brethren. 
The Slaves long continued to be refractory and trouble- 
some ; and the irruptions of the Tartar Magyars or Hun- 
garians, brought back the terror of Attila's Huns even in 
the heart of Gaul and Italy. But the Eastern barbarians, 
though causing terrible misery and loss, and long defy- 
ing the efforts of the Carolingian kings to bridle them, 
never accomplishing a settlement in the West. They 
were kept within their own borders ; and the vast plains 
north and south of the Danube were finally occupied by 
the Hungarian and Slave populations which were defi- 
nitely to inherit them. 

But in the North and West it was different. The 
movement in Denmark and Scandinavia towards the 
_. , beginning of the ninth century had dis- 

The North- f,^ . . ^ ^, . ,^ . 

men in quicted the mmd of Charles the Great. A 

Danish king had stirred up war and defied 

him on the Elbe; and the barks of the Northmen were 

beginning to scare the coasts of Gaul, as they had already 
begun to burn churches and plunder mon- 

7^71.794. asteries, on the Enq-lish coasts. They were 

[A.S.Chron.] ' f' ^ 

the forerunners of a tremendous tempest — of 
a descent of the barbarians, which in its wide-spread 
havoc, in its obstinate continuance, in its aims and con- 
sequences, was as eventful as the invasions of the Goths 
and Franks, or the conquests of the Angles and Saxons. 
It caused the last great change in the population of 
Western Europe, till the expulsion of the Moors from 
Spain. We are familiar with the Danes in England ; 



A. D. 800-900. The Norsemen in Gaul. 167 

and we know that the Northmen created the great pro- 
vince of Normandy. But the Danes and the Northmen 
were the same; and what they did in England and in 
Gaul were but parts, simultaneously carried on, of one 
great system of adventurous exploring, of plunder, and 
attempted conquest. The havoc that they made in 
Gaul was as wide, as terrible, and as unintermitted as 
their havoc in England. In Gaul they had a yet wider 
field, and they ravaged wherever rivers could float their 
ships, from the Rhine to the Seine, the Loire and the 
Garonne; and up the Rhine and Moselle as far as Cob- 
lentz and Treves, up the French rivers far into the inte- 
rior, to Paris, Orleans, Bourges. The attempts of the 
Frank kings to arrest or limit the mischief, even on the 
Rhine, and much more in Gaul, were unavailing. Sum- 
mer after summer, as the ninth century wore on, and as 
the next began, the Northern adventurers came with in- 
creased force, with more daring leaders, with larger de- 
signs, with more clear superiority. Even if defeated, 
they only changed their object of attack. Discomfited 
and beaten off in England, they crossed over to Gaul. 
If the local resistance was too strong for them in Gaul, 
they tried their fortune on the opposite shores. The 
deepest discouragement and terror took possession of 
the populations of Gaul, who seemed for the most part 
helpless. We are hardly accustomed to the thought that 
it was within but a little that half France should become 
a Normandy, and that Danish kings should rule in the 
land of the Franks, as they did in the land of the Eng- 
lish. Things pointed in that direction towards the end 
of the ninth century, under Charles the Bald and his 
children. Perhaps what prevented it was the compara- 
tive smallness of the numoers of the invaders, conse- 
quent on their mode of access. The largest of their fleets 



1 68 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 845-882. 

could not transport the barbarian hosts who marched 
by land. 

The first serious danger from the Northmen in Gaul 
coincided with the outbreak of intestine dissensions in 
the family of Louis the Pious. Just after the catastrophe 
of the Liigenfeld (833) they appear burning churches and 
plundering monasteries at the mouth of the Scheldt, and 
even threatening the cities of the Rhine. In May, 841, 
amid the civil broils between the Carolingian brothers, 
a month before the fight of Fontenailles, Osker the 
„ . . , Northman entered the Seine, which was soon 

Coin'irience 

of D..nish to be specially the Norman river, plundered 

aitack> with , , , „ ... 

internal ^nd Dumed Kouen, and retired, ransommg 

quarrels. ^^ destroying towns and monasteries, on his 

way back to the sea. From this time the Northmen 
learned that the broad rivers of Gaul were more worth 
exploring than the coasts. The Seine, because it was 
nearest, and led up to Paris, now becoming a place of 
great importance in the new West Prankish realm — the 
Loire and the Garonne, because they led, through corn 
lands and vineyards and the richest cities, deepest into 
the heart of the country, became the scenes of periodic 
visitations from the Danish adventurers and pirates. 
Before the eyes of Charles the BaM, who was powerless 
to hinder them, the Danes (at Easter, 845) pillaged the 
monasteries of Paris, and then extorted the Danegeld, 
the tribute paid for peace, or rather respite. They came 
again, twelve years later (857), this time burning the 
monasteries, and scattering the bones of Clovis and 
Clotildis. Their third Easter visit (861) was followed by 
a parti. il settlement under a leader who. like Guthrum 
in England, received baptism, and by the creation of a 
barrier and bulwark agamst them, a frontier duchy, of 
which the chief seat was Paris, and the holder a valiant 



876. Danish Attack on the Fi'ench Kingdoms. 169 

soldier, Robert the Strong. From the duchy of Paris 
and from the house of Robert the Strong, proceeded the 
line which was to displace the Carolingians, and to be- 
come the kings ot France. Paris was fortified ; the great 
siege of 885, in which kings and emperors did so little to 
relieve the city, and Duke Odo, Robert's son, kept the 
Northmen so gallantly at bay, was the turning point of 
deliverance and hope to the Franks, and the title, in due 
time, of Odo, to supplant the Carolingian king. But 
the Northmen still prevailed. The county of Flanders, 
created like Paris, as a frontier defence (862), could not 
prevent an invasion of the Frankish rivers (881, 882), in 
which the Danes pillaged and burnt the most famous 
cities, Maestricht, Cologne, Coblentz, Liege, Antwerp, 
even Aachen, Soissons, and Reims. But in Germany 
they were al length checked, Gaul was an easier prey, 
and they began to occupy their conquests. Three times 
had the Frank kings granted to Danish chiefs the Count- 
ship of the Frisian shore, from the mouth of the Meuse 
to the Weser. The lands where they settled began to 
receive their name, in France Normandy, the "land of 
the Northern " {terra Nonnannoru??i) , answering to what 
in England was called the Danelagu, the land of Danish 
law. Besides the Normandy which they founded on the 
Seine, other Normandies were attempted on the Loire, 
round Amiens, in Burgundy and in Auvergne, round 
Chartres, in Brittany. Even in Germany, on the western 
bank of the Rhine, as far as Coblentz, Godfrey, the Da- 
nish count of Friseland, would have created a Danishry, 
if he had not been murdered by Charles the Fat (885), 
who had himself made a grant of. the territory. It was 
in vain that they were beaten, and that songs of triumph 
were made over some rare victory of the Franks. One 
of these songs has survived, in the German tongue of the 



lyo Beginning of tJie Middle Ages. A. D. 876-911. 

Franks of that time, the Ludwigslied, in honour of a 
victory won by Louis III., King of the West Franks. But 
the Danes reappeared, and the continual Danegeld was 
the proof of their success. 

At length, amid a crowd of chiefs, some of the same 
name, we hear of Rolf, or Rollo. At first he is hard to 
distinguish. But he is, apparently, to be discerned in 

those disastrous days, when Charles the 
Nonhman. S^^*^' unable to restrain the Northmen, yet 

found leisure to attack his brother's children, 
and attempt the imperial crown (876). Charles was de- 
feated ignominiously at Andernach by his nephew, Louis 
tne Saxon (Oct. 8) ; and a month before the battle (Sept. 
16), Rollo sailed up the Seine, just as Osker had first led 
the Danes to Rouen, a month before the murderous bat- 
tle of Fontenailles between the grandsons of Charles the 
Great. Charles, humbled on the Rhine, thinking now 
only of Italy, and on the eve of a miserable end, con- 
firmed a treaty by which Rollo, besides having his Dane- 
geld, was to occupy Rouen. Rollo was henceforth, 
under Charles's successors, master of Rouen and the 
Seine. This did not prevent him from joining his coun- 
trymen in their ravages; but his name is not prominent 
till, amid the strife between Charles the Simple, the 
grandson of Charles the Bald, and the Dukes of Paris, 
he reappears. He had then become strong enough to 
be worth bargaining with as an ally. Charles the Simple, 
and Duke Robert of Paris, joined in giving Rollo a legal 
position in the lands which he occupied. A formal con- 
ference took place b&tween the Northman with his chief- 
tains, and the Frank, king, on the banks of the Epte, 
afterwards the boundary stream of Normandy. Rollo 
demanded, after some bargaining obtained, all from the 
Epte to the sea westwards, including Brittany. A doubt- 



A. D. 911-954- Growth of Normandy. 171 

fill story says that he also received King Charles's 
daughter. For this territory he performed homage; "he 
placed his hands between the king's hands, and became 
the king's man ;'' and the next year he was baptized at 
Rouen. The "land of the Normans" had become a 
part of the Frank kingdom ; the " Duke of the Normans," 
though long sneered at as a " Duke of the Pirates," took 
rank with Dukes of Paris and Counts of Flanders, and 
was in time to be the premier duke of France. The 
treaty or agreement of St. Clair-sur-Epte was probably 
at the time not different from many trans- Treaty of St. 
actions of the same kind. But it was the Ck''"'^"'" 

tpte: 911. 

Starting-point of great changes. It formally 
introduced into the Latin world a new German race 
which rapidly unlearned its old habits and language, 
becoming more Latin than the Latins round it. And it 
added to western France a state which was to be its 
most powerful element ; a people of singular .strength, 
versatility, and ambition, who were to exercise an influ- 
ence without example on the fortunes of all their neigh- 
bours. 

When the settlement of Normandy had been finally 
recognized, and had attained, as it did in another gene- 
ration, its full limits, northward and west- ^ , . 

' ' ' Foundation 

wards, the Danish attempts to settle else- of Duchy of 

. Normandy. 

where in Gaul gradually slackened, though 
their ravages continued for some time longer. The 
Northmen received some severe lessons. Twice in their 
efforts to penetrate to the central highlands of Auvergne 
and Bungundy they were defeated with great slaughter. 
In time the Danishry on the Loire and the Somme 
melted into the surrounding population. But the great 
result of their invasion, RoUo's almost royal dukedom, 
grew and prospered. It held the balance between 

N 



I -J 2 Bt'i^iiining of tJie Middle Ages. a. d. 928-936. 

Frank parties and kings. Vainly, by force or intrigue, 
the king of the Franks, Louis d'Outremer, son of Charles 
the Simple, endeavoured to undo his own and his 
father's work. Ignominious failure was the result. And 
twice, within two years (943-945), the Normans held the 
king of the Franks a prisoner in their hands. 

From the tmie of Charles the Simple and the estab- 
lishment of the Norman duchy, the Carolingians played 
Failure of ^ Varied but losing game against the rising 

ii,,^ "^ , house — the counts and dukes of Paris, the 

Charles the 

Bald. descendants of Uuke Robert. The royal 

authority was undetermined by the growth of great local 
potentates, and among them the lords of Paris and the 
adjoining territory were the most formidable, from the 
remembrance of their exploits against the Northmen, 
from their ambition, and from their ability. They had 
their rivals on the North and East ; the new Danish mas- 
ters of the valley of the Seine ; the counts of Vcrmandois, 
descendants of the great Charles. These rivalries, 
though at times they gave great advantages to the king, 
also marked his weakness and shattered the unity of the 
realm. The Carolingians had henceforth to fight for 
their kingdom with their great nobles. They were over- 
thrown, driven into exile, supplanted by strangers, 
restored. They were not without gallantry and spirit, 
but they owed their crown, when they held it, less to 
their own power than to the jealousies of the great terri- 
torial princes round them, whom a few more turns of 
tightening custom and stiffening precedent were to 
change into the great feudatories of the later ages. 
Charles the Simple, after a life of vicissitude and fruitless 
conflict, perished miserably in prison, by the treachery 
of one of the great rival nobles, Herbert of Vermandois 
(928), His infant son, nephew of the English Athelstan, 



936-954- Last Struggles of the Carolingians. 173 

saved with difficulty, and brought up in England — Louis 
the Stranger, Louis " d'Outremer," "from over sea" — 
owed his recall from exile (936) to the mutual suspicions 
of his father's enemies, Herbert of Vermandois and 
Hugh of Paris, who both counted on being able to use 
him for their own purposes. He came back to waste a 
gallant spirit and a reign of eighteen years (936-954), in 
fruitless efforts, fruitless even when he was victorious, to 
shake off the crushing pressure of the great dukes and 
counts, who in Paris, Normandy, Flanders, Vermandois, 
Lotharingia, Burgundy, Poitou, Aquitaine, hemmed in 
the king of the Franks in his fortress of Laon and its 
narrow surrounding district — all that remained besides 
the name of king to the family of Charles the Great. 
Nothing proves more certainly the failing powers of the 
Carolingian house, than the contrast between Louis, and 
the German king of the new Saxon line, Otto or Otho 
(951-973). Both were equally surrounded by the form- 
idable rivalry of powerful local chiefs, by confusion, 
selfishness, treason, by terrible outbreaks of barbarian 
invasion. But what the Carolingians could not do. Otto 
did. He asserted his mastery over the turbulence round 
him ; he conceived and carried out worthy political aims ; 
he attempted and partly accomplished the reform of abuses 
in government and in the Church ; and with no more ad- 
vantages than Louis, he left a great name as a king and 
a ruler, the founder, a second time, of the new Roman 
empire. Louis' son, Lothar, inherited the kingdom on 
the same terms as his father (954-986). The great duke 
of Paris claimed, as in his father's case, to be the pro- 
tector of the king. He still preferred to make, control, 
despoil, torment the kings of the Franks, than to be king 
himself. Lothar's reign was wasted, like his father's, in 
ignoble and unprofitable tiials of strength. There was 



174 \ Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 

much fighting, much crime, much intrigue, much vicissi- 
tude of fortune ; but everything contributed to the grow- 
ing strength and the independence of the duke of the 
Normans, and of his ordinary ally the duke of Paris. 
Louis and Lothar between them reigned for 50 years, 
but in vain. At length the time of the Carolingians was 
exhausted. Hugh the Great (1956) who would not be 
a king himself, left a son, Hugh Capet, for 
CaroUn- whom he prepared a kingdom, and who was 

gians give ^ '■ ^ 

)Uceiothe ready when the last Carolingian became 
' '' ' king, to follow the example of the founder 

of the Carolingian line. The last Carolingian, boyish, 
profligate, restless, reigned but a year (1987). He died, 
probably poisoned. The great ]ine ended in a Louis, 
whom the historians have nicknamed, "le Faineant," 
"der Faul," "the Good-for-nothing." His death was 
followed by the election of Hugh Capet. In vain did 
Charles, Louis' brother, from the impregnable rock of 
Laon, the last refuge of the Carolingians, strike des- 
perately for his inheritance. The great interests round 
him, the political and ecclesiastical treachery of the time, 
were against him. After an obstinate struggle he was at 
last entrapped by the Bishop of Laon, betrayed, and de- 
livered into the hands of Hugh Capet. He died in 
prison ; and the Carolingians disappear from histor}-. 
With the end of the Carolingian line, and indeed long 
before it was extinct, came the end of that 

End of 

Fr-nk do- Frank power which, after the fall of Rome, 

had for four centuries played the foremost 
part in the West, and which had culminated in Charles's 
empire. The Franks had outstripped and defeated all 
their ereat rivals, the Gothic and then the Lombard race, 
in the competition for the leadership of the new world. 
They had been the conquerors and tamers of their 



987 End of the Carolingians . 175 

kindred barbarians — Alamans, Bavarians, Frisians, 
Saxons. Their manifest superiority, their brilhant suc- 
cesses, seemed to themselves and to their contemporaries 
to raise them to the greatness of the ancient Romans. 
The popes are never tired of celebrating their glory ; and 
their own feeling about it breaks out with a kind of 
lyrical enthusiasm, in the barbarous Latin of the prologue 
to the collection called the "Salic law." "The illus- 
trious race of the Franks, created by the hand of God, 
mighty in arms, deep in counsel, stable in the bond of 
peace, in body noble and stalwart, in fairness and beauty 
matchless, daring and swift and stern, newly come to the 
Catholic faith, free from heresy ! While it was still in 
the barbarian state, yet by God's inspiration, it sought 
the key of knowledge, and according to the bent of its 
own qualities, desiring righteousness and holding fast 

piety, its chiefs dictated the Salic law Long live 

[vivat) whoever loves the Franks. May Christ keep their 
realm, and fill their rulers with the light of His grace ; 
may He protect their host ; may He grant them the 
memorials of the faith, the joys and the felicity of peace. 
May Jesus Christ the Lord of lords, by His mercy guide 
their times. For this is that race which, when it was little 
in number, yet being mighty in valour and strength, 
broke off, by fighting, the tyrannous yoke of the Romans 
from its neck ; and after it had made the confession of 
baptism, by it the bodies of the holy martyrs, which the 
Romans had burned with fire or slain with the sword, or 
cast forth to be torn by wild beasts, were magnificently 
enshrined Avith gold and precious stones." 

But their day as a race was over. As that single and 
foremost nation which had controlled and directed the 
fortunes of all around them, they were to dissolve and 
disappear. They were merged and lost in the two great 



176 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. ix. 

rival peoples which arose after them, and partly from 
them, and who divided their heritage. It was long be- 
fore they learned that they were no longer one, that they 
were to be divided. Long after the treaty of Verdun 
(843), and the death of the last legitimate Carolingian 
emperor, (888), even the Saxon kings of Germany 
claimed to interfere in the affairs of Gaul as representing 
the old kingdom and leadership of the Franks. But 
their claim no longer answered to the realities of the case. 
There was still to be a great Francia^ appropriating the 
name and fame of the Franks of Clovis and the great 
Charles ; but it was to be no longer German, but Latin. 
There were still to be Franks who were Germans, from 
whose dukes and kings were to come emperors of the 
Romans ; a Francia in the heart of Germany, and on 
both sides of the Rhine, retaining the name when it 
shrank up to the " Circle of Franconia" of later tiines. 
But the Franks who had ruled in Europe and established 
the power of the popes, the Franks who prepared the 
way for the middle ages, the Franks on whom for a time 
seemed to devolve the Roman empire, the united Franks 
of Charles the Great, broken up and separated, are known 
no more in history after the failure and extinction of the 
family of their greatest man. 



CHAPTER IX. 



CONSOLIDATION AND UNITY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE 

UNDER THE KINGS, CHIEFLY OF WESSEX — THE 

NORTHMEN IN ENGLAND. 

During the years which saw these great changes on the 
Continent — the establishment, the glory, and the brcak- 
"D of the Frank empire — the English nation, through a 



CHAP. IX. Consolidation of England. 177 

history outwardly as turbulent and confused as that of 
the Continent, was slowly but distinctly becoming one, 
and preparing to endure one of the severest trials which 
can come upon a people — that of foreign conquest, and 
foreign conquest twice repeated within half a century. 

The progress of consolidation wliich was going on 
from the eighth to the tenth century, in what were to be 
separate states on the Continent, in the Scandinavian 
and Slavonic countries and in Hungary, as well as in 
Gaul and Germany, was going on steadily and visibly, 
though with frequent interruptions, in England ; and the 
process is not difficult to trace. The bands, or tribes, or 
leagues, or settlements, which in the preceding centur- 
ies had gradually become confluent, first in larger or 
smaller districts, and then in separate kingdoms, the so- 
called Heptarchy, had come, through war or agreement, 
to acknowledge the superiority of one or other of the 
kingdoms, and the over-lordship, temporary or heredi- 
tary, of its king. This over-lordship, which was some- 
times but not always expressed by the term Bretwalda, 
after being won and held by Oswald of Northumbria, 
and still more strongly by Offa of the great English mid- 
land, Mercia, finally passed to the kings of the line of 
Cerdic, the kings of south-western Wessex. Roughly 
speaking, the end of the seventh century, the time of the 
first Frank mayors, of the palace, is the time of the pre- 
dominance of Northumberland; the eighth, the age of 
Charles Martel, Pipin, and Pipin's great son, is that of 
the superiority of Mercia; the ninth, the age of the Car- 
olingians, is that of the superiority of Wessex. And 
with Wessex and Cerdic's house it remained. Egbert 
of Wessex, during the days of Offa's power, had, like 
other English princes, found refuge for thirteen years 
from the dangerous king of Mercia at the court of 



178 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. ix. 

Charles the Great. In that school of statesmanship, of 
war, and of awakening intellectual activity, he saw and 
probably learned much ; and he forms an important link 
between England and the Continent. On the death of 
Offa he returned to England, and was chosen king of 
Wessex. Egbert became king in England a year or two 
after the great Frank emperor had been crowned at 
Rome. Egbert represents the beginning in England of 
that new state of things, the advance from the old-fash- 
ioned barbarism of the Merovingian and early Anglo- 
Saxon times, which on the Continent is represented by 
the ideas, the aims, and the achievements of the great 
Frank emperor. In the course of his long reign of nearly 
forty years (802-39), Egbert established his supremacy 
over the other English kingdoms, which in. the case of 
Mercia and Northumbria retained their subject kings. 
He was not only king of the West Saxons, but king of 
the English, as Charles was king of the Franks, having 
kines as well as dukes under him ; and the idea of the 
imity of the English nation and the English kingdom, to 
which Egbert first gave expression, was never again to 
be lost. 

Thus left to itself, unaffected by the political shocks 
and rearrangements of the Continent, and but partially 
influenced by the developments there of social ideas and 
forms, the nation which had now become English, grad- 
ually worked out its own union, its own institutions, and 
its own character. Its society rested on the class distinc- 
tions, in one shape or another common to all the Teu- 
tonic races, except, perhaps, the Franks ; the nobles, the 
freemen — free but not noble, — and the large and vague- 
ly-determined class of the half-free, or unfree, whether 
farmer, tenant, dependent, labourer, serf, or slave, 
bound to the land or bound to the household ; the £or/s, 



CHAP. IX. English Social Arrangements. 1 79 

Ceorls, and Lcrfs, of the laws of Kent ; -the Edhelingi, 
Frilingx^Txxid La::zi of the Saxons of the Continent ; the 
Nobiles, the Ligcnui, and Liti of the Capitularies, 
These classes arc distinctly marked, as in all the Teu- 
tonic laws, by the difference of their "wergild," or the 
fixed compensation payable for personal injury or 
death. Its land tenure grew out of the old Teutonic 
system, in which a community, usually allied in kinship, 
had its defined territory, its Mark, or. afterwards in the 
German lands, its Gau, in which the land, in the first in- 
stance the public land of the community, and in larger or 
smaller portions of it long remaining so, became in other 
portions more or less absolutely appropriated to persons, 
and then to families ; appropriated by early occupation, 
by clearing and building, by grant, by custom, by vio- 
lence. The tendency to absolute ownership is a natural 
and strong one, and it would be increased when a tribe 
became part of an army, conquering and settling. 
Among the English the traces of the old Mark system 
were seen in the Folciand, the public land of the town- 
ship, used in common, or rented by individuals, but not 
alienated. But besides this there was the estate of 
private and inherited property, held by public witness, 
the Ethel, afterwards called the Alodial \2iX\d.\ and there 
was also the land, carved originally out of the public es- 
tate, and held by written charter, the Bocland, but soon 
confused with, or becoming equivalent to the Alodial por- 
tion, the patrimony and heritage. The political centre 
was the king; the necessity, in the first instance, of war 
and conquest, in each original division of the new settlers, 
but a necessity heartily and readily adopted in peace, the 
uncertain and fitful peace of those days, as thoroughly 
congenial to the Teutonic spirit ; the king of the men, 
the folk, to whom as a community the land belonged. 



l8o 



Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. ix. 



The king had -his special "companions," his "friends,'' 
"thegns," "ministers," "loaf-eaters," bound to his per- 
son by benefits and privileges, and growing by degrees 
into a formally recognized class of nobility, which at 
length overshadowed the older nobles w ho were noble 
by race and blood. The larger divisions of the land had 
their governors, " earldormen," taken from local poten- 
tates, or from the king's " companions" or his kinsmen. 
Besides these, another class of persons gradually grew 
up, bound to the king or to other chiefs, by a voluntary 
and formal tie of personal allegiance : those who had, 
according to the usage of the time, conivicnded them- 
selves to a lord as his " 9nen,'" and to whom the lord gave 
protection in return for service. With these high per- 
sons, according to their personal qualities, more than by 
any definite rules, lay the power of government and the 
impulse to action. But, as in all the German nations of 
the time, power was habitually exercised very much in 
public. The king or ruler was continually and periodi- 
cally face to face with assemblies, more or less large, of 
his people, to whose approval he appealed in legislation 
and policy, and whose concurrence and support he really 
needed. The public assembly, including all freemen, if 
not also some portion of the only half-free class below 
them, and having at its head the chief and most venera- 
ble persons of the community, whether kingdom, shire, 
or township, was the place where public matters were 
heard, and opinion, however rudely and imperfectly, 
was yet expressed. This institution of the public assem- 
bly, under different names [Mall Thing, Moot, in Latin, 
Placitinii), accompanies everywhere the advance and 
settlemen*: of the tribes of the German stock, whether 
the Goths in Spain, the Franks in Gaul, the Lombards 
in Italy, or the Saxons and Angles in Britain. As the 



CHAP. IX. Public Assemblies, t8i 

kingdom enlarged in compass, the character of the cen- 
tral assembly necessarily altered ; even if all freemen 
might come to it, all could not; it became, without pur- 
pose or rule, a more selected and representative body ; 
representative not by design or election, but the nature 
of the case. In addition to this, perhaps growing out of 
it, there was the " assembly of the wise," a king's coun- 
cil of those whose place made them his natural council- 
lors, and the people's spokesmen — bishops, earldormen, 
king's thanes — attended, it might be, on great occasions 
by larger gatherings of freemen or warriors on the spot. 
Meanwhile, the local assemblies remained. " The folk- 
moot was left to the shire ; the witena-gemot was gath- 
ered round the king." All great public transactions 
sUch as the election or acceptance of a king, made in 
the first instance by the select wzV^z;?, were also witnessed 
and approved by some kind of general assembly of the 
nation. The legislation and charters of the king, osten- 
sibly, often really, the personal acts of the king, bear on 
iheir face the concurrence of the witan ; and our docu- 
mentary evidence exhibits the chief men of the nation in 
general as parties, more or less really, according to the 
infinite variations of character and circumstances, to all 
the acts of government, administration, and policy. 

In indistinct and ill-defined forms, the elements of the 
various constitutional arrangements which were to be — • 
feudalism, or popular government, monarchy personal 
or parliamentary — were all present ; but none, in that 
age of confused and uncertain beginnings, had assumed 
a full-grown and consistent shape. The power of the king 
was great and increasing; yet it grew side by side with 
great personal freedom and strongly marked personal 
rights all round him, and with great weight and great pow- 
er supposed to exist in high bodies and assemblies, with 



1 82 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. ix. 

which he had to deal. The relation of lord and " man," 
or vassal, was increasing; the king could add to it gifts 
of land, "benefices"; but the king was still thought of 
as the king of the people, and not as the owner of the 
land, though the disposer of the public part of it, the 
folkia?id. It lay in the course of events, what these ele- 
ments were to work out, and how they were to affect, 
and be affected by, the character of the nation. For a 
long time two counter processes went on ; the amalga- 
mation of distinct national divisions, with their various 
forms of power and rule, under strong kings ; and then the 
loosening of the new fabric under weak ones. It was 
what went on under the Frank kings on the Continent: 
and Milton compares these tribal strifes, to the wars 
"between kites and crows." But in these strifes and 
trials of strength, lay the process and discipline by 
which, in those rude conditions of society, a nation 
learned the necessity of becoming one. 

But just as the Anglo-Saxon settlements were begin- 
ning to coalesce into one kingdom, a new form of trial 
was coming on them. A terrible enemy broke in from 
without. In common with the rest of Western Europe, 
England was assailed on all sides by the fleets of the 
Norse sea-rovers. Their first appearance in England is 
chronicled in the year 787, when the crews of three 
strange pirate barks, rovers from the North, slew a 
king's officer who tried to seize them. It was the threat- 
ening thunder shower, which announced the most fear- 
ful and prolonged storm : a storm which tried to the ut- 
most the force and endurance of the English race. It 
burst at once on the Continent and on England. The 
Northmen, who, in the weakness and divisions of the 
Frank empire, had learned to use the great rivers of 
Germany and Gaul as highways, and who in the middle 



CHAP. IX. Danish Invasions. i8 



o 



of the ninth century were burning- or pillaging their most 
flourishing cities, had also learned the way to England, 
had vexed the last years of Egbert, and under his son 
yEthelwulf had stormed and plundered Canterbury and 
London. In the year 855, the year in which Biorn 
Ironsides is said to have established a permanent 
iTiilitary post on the Seine, the Danes, who had hitherto 
landed, plundered, and sailed away, now for the first 
time wintered in Kent. They began to settle, and from 
their settlements to co-operate with their countrymen 
from the sea. It was the Anglo-Saxon invasion over 
again, with its stages of wide and desolating rapine, and 
then of occupation and encroachment by heathen barba- 
rians in a Christian land. The resistance was obstinate and 
persevering. Yet at one time it appeared as if resistance 
would be in vain. Within a hundred years after their 
first appearance, the Danes seemed master in the north 
and east. The bulwark of English power had fallen 
before them when the young king of Wessex, Alfred, 
(871-901), was driven into the marshes, the "water 
fastnesses," of Somerset. It seemed as if the civilization 
and Christianity of England were to perish. The heathen 
advance was stayed, and the fortunes of the English race 
were saved, by Alfred's victory on the edge of the Wilt- 
shire downs at Edington. But though the Danes were 
for the moment checked and humbled, Alfred had to 
submit to the hard condition of allowing them to settle 
in the largest half of England. By the agreement and 
partition of Wedmore (878), Guthrum, their leader, ac- 
knowledged Alfred's supremacy, and he and his chiefs 
received baptism. But the land was divided by the line 
of Walling Street, running with an outward curve from 
the Thames and the sea to Shrewsbury ; and all outside 
of it to the north-east became the Danelagu, the land of 



iS4 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. ix. 

Danish law— Essex, and East Anglia, and Northumbria, 
and half of the midland Mercia. The Danes were kept 
out of Wessex and the other half of Mercia, including 
London ; and these were knit together the more closely 
in the presence of their restless foe. In this refuge and 
core of English feehng, Alfred laid the foundations of a 
policy of recovery. Danish attacks from within and 
from abroad did not cease with the peace of Wedmore. 
The weight of their visitations fell alternately on Eng- 
land and France ; the peace of Wedmore was followed 
by more systematic and determined war in the north of 
Gaul, on the Scheldt, the Somnie, and the Seine. Two 
years after, (8801, the Northmen revenged their defeat 
in the Ardennes, from the German king Louis, by a 
great overthrow and slaughter of the Saxon nobles at 
Luneburg. Four years after (882), in spite of the valour 
of another Louis, the West Frank king, the hero of the 
Ludiuigslied already mentioned, they were ravaging 
the north of Gaul, from Amiens and Arras to Soissons 
and Reims. And while Alfred was comparatively at 
peace the great siege of Paris was going on, in which 
Count Odo's heroic defence laid the foundation of the 
fortunes of the Capetian house. Again, the great defeat 
of the Danes on the Dyle near Louvain, by Charles's 
successor, Arnulf (891), threw them once more on Eng- 
land, to prove by a harassing and perplexing warfare, 
Alfred's great qualities, his promptitude, his skill, his 
vigour, his indefatigable rapidity of movement. But by 
patient resolution, Alfred's successors up to King Edgar 
(959-975) were able gradually to bring under subjection, 
more or less complete, the Danish settlements in Eng- 
land ; while assailants from abroad were kept at bay by 
vigorous and persistent fighting. The Danish invasions, 
though mischievous and cruel disturbed, but did not 



A. D. Soo-975. The Kings 0/ IVessex. 185 

arrest, the national growth. It is indeed remarkable, 
how readily the Danish new-comers, after a generation 
or two, became fused with the English stock ; how 
readily they received the English religion, and accepted 
the English speech. When once settled down in peace, 
the adventurous intruders were gradually tamed among 
the English population round them, and became in Eng- 
land undistinguishable from Englishmen, except as 
English provinces were distinguished from one another. 
The great and remarkable feature of English history, 
when it is contemporaneous with that of the followers of 
Charles the Great abroad, is the succession and influence 
of a singularly able line of kings. The kings of the house 
of Cerdic in Wessex were unlike, in their continuity of 
policy and energy, to any other series of kings of the 
time. They were different in their qualities, and even 
in their fortunes. But they were all men with a distinct 
purpose, which in different ways they carried out; the 
purpose to give unity, strength, and elevation to their 
English people. For the space of nearly a hundred and 
eighty years (800-975), the kings of Wessex steadily pur- 
sued, in the face of the most adverse circumstances, and 
even with great sacrifices, their practical object of bind- 
ing together and consolidating the various divisions of 
the Saxons and Angles, which left to themselves would 
have readily grown into the evil habits of internal and 
local animosities, so common at the time. They did 
this, doubtless, by the strong 1 and, yet by no exercise 
of despotic tyranny, and apparently with the full concur- 
rence of their own chiefs and leaders. Egbert laid the 
foundation, by establishing a supremacy over the north- 
ern and midland kingdoms. For thirty-five years after 
Egbert, his successors were occupied in the desperate 
task of protecting the land against the Danish ravages ; 



1 86 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. ix. 

their success was chequv:;red, but they never lost heart, 
and their resistance to tlie strangers bound the Enghsh 
to one another and to the royal house. The danger 
and the resistance came to their height under Alfred 
(871-901); and Alfred was the flower and type of the 
Wessex kings. Sober, dauntless, resolute, patient, he 
met his circumstances, dark or bright, as they came, with 
the same steady temper, the same high public spirit. 
Receiving his kingdom amid calamity and disaster, over- 
powered and overmatched, he retired, biding his time, 
but not losing hope, till his opportunity came, and he 
was able to win and enforce a peace. By the peace of 
Wedmore, which allowed the Christian Danes under 
Guthrum to settle and live by their own law in the east 
of England — the Dajieiagu, a very faint kind of English 
Normandy — he abated, though he could not entirely 
check, the pressure of the Northern rovers for nearly a 
hundred years, and thus gained a breathing time for the 
works of peace. Alfred, serious in his religion as in all 
he did, and in this as in other things full of sympathy 
with his people, applied himself to raise and improve 
them. He set on foot reformation in the Church. He 
rekindled the lost learning of Bede and Alcwin ; he 
awakened what was equally precious — greater in this 
than the great Charles— the faith, the confidence of Eng- 
lishmen in the powers and worth of the English tongue. 
He wrote, he translated, he edited in Enghsh. He 
represents in the highest degree all the humanizing ten- 
dencies of the time, the efforts to bring out what was ex- 
cellent and noble in the national spirit, and to cast off 
what was barbarous. In this he was like Charles the 
Great; but in Alfred there was more soberness of aim 
and purity of life, with more care forjustice and mercy. 
Alfred is the father of the English navy ; he saw, like 



^. D. 800-975. T/ie Kings of JVessex. 187 

Edo-ar after him, that England to be safe, must be 
powerful on the sea. He was a legislator, reverencing 
and holding to the past, but owning the changes of the 
present, and not venturing too much to bind the future. 
He was sparing of his laws, because, as he writes in the 
preface to his "Dooms," " I durst not risk of mine own 
to set down much in writing, seeing that to me it was 
unknown what part of them would be liked by those who 
were after us." Alfred set the standard of an English 
ruler; one who thought not of himself, but of his charge 
and duty ; who did nothing for show, and sought not his 
own glory, but gave himself, and his credit too when 
necessary, to the interest of his kingdom, and the work 
of his place. He was followed in the first years of the 
tenth century (901-925) by his son, Edward the Elder, 
who followed the same policy of uniting the nation to- 
gether. He waged war for it with energy and success, 
quelling revolts and bridling the troublesome Danish 
settlers with fortresses which were to grow into towns. 
He incorporated Mercia, governing it by his famous 
sister Ethelfleda, the "Lady of the Mercians." He re- 
ceived homage from the "Welsh'' princes of Scotland, 
Strathclyde and Wales, who saw in the English king 
their bulwark against the Danes. Athelstan, (925-9:10), 
his son, the hero of the earliest surviving English war- 
ballad, the battle of Brunanburh, followed in his father's 
steps — crushing rebellions, teaching the English by 
fighting to feel themselves one, beginning to be famous 
even across the sea. Sisters of Athelstan were the wives 
of Western kings and princes: of Charles the Simple, 
and of his antagonist, Duke Hugh of Paris, of Boso, king 
of Provence, of Otto the Great, king of Germany. The 
widow and son of Charles the Simple took refuge with 
Athelstan, and Athelstan's influence counted for much 

o 



1 88 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 901-940. 

in the lestoration of his nephew, Louis d'Outrenier, who 
brought some of the vigour of the hne of Wessex, but 
not its abihty or its fortune, into the failing race of Charles 
the Great. Through trouble and hard fighting, not 
without reverses, his two brothers, Edmund and Edred, 
and his nephew Edwy, carried on the work, of amalga- 
mation, defence, and government (940-959) ; and when 
another nephew, Edgar (959-975), received the kingdom 
of the English, he received it compact within itself, a 
kingdom in which he was really master on each side of 
Watlins; Street, over the Danish settlers as well as over 
his Englishmen, while his supremacy was acknowledged 
all over the island, in Northumbria, and by the Celtic 
Scots and Welsh. He was king of the whole of Britain, 
and of all its kings. The scribes of his Chancery delight 
to style him by the Western term Imperator^ and the 
Eastern Basileits. He seemed the Island counterpart of 
the Great Otto, crowned emperor at Rome in 962. The 
story told by Florence of Worcester, of King Edgar's 
barge rowed on the Dee by eight vassal British kings, 
expresses what was thought and remembered about him. 
"Throughout many nations," chants the old English 
chronicler, " and over the sea, the 'gannet's bath,' kings 
honoured him far and wide." "No fleet," he declares, 
"was so bold, nor host so strong, that could tear away 
the prey among the English kin, while that noble king 
held his throne." 

In Edgar the Peaceful the great political and social 
work of the kings of Wessex reached its height. His 
reign of peace for seventeen years, troubled only by in- 
significant local outbreaks, but by no serious wars, is one 
of the most remarkable phenomena of the time. Under 
it the English felt themselves one people, with a destined 
plaee among the nations. West Saxons and Mercians, 



A. D. 94o~975- Edgar — EtJielrcd. 189 

Northumbrians, East Anglians, and men of Kent and 
Sussex, were content to be united members of the great 
KngHsh '* kin " and reahn. They had taken the definite 
mould and stamp, which they were henceforth to keep. 
Tremendous disasters awaited them. They were to 
measure their strength in vain, once and again, against 
foreign invaders. Tiieir enemies were growing in power 
and union as well as themselves. Contemporary with 
the kings of Wessex, from Alfred to Edgar, the succes- 
sors of Rollo the Norman (876-927), William Longsword 
(927-943), and Richard the Fearless (943-996), were cre- 
ating Normandy. Contemporary, too, with them, the 
Scandinavian tribes, from whom both Danes and Nor- 
mans came, were growing up, like their kinsfolk, into 
nations and kingdoms, under chiefs of strange names — 
Gorm the Old (883-935), Harald Bluetooth (935-985). 
Sweyn or Swend of the Forked Beard (985-1014), Olaf, 
the Christian king of Norway (994-1000?). The Eng- 
lish were to be ruled weakly and faithlessly, to be de- 
fended by fitful and useless valour, to be betrayed by their 
chiefs and played upon by strangers. But England was 
already England; the nation had already become con- 
stituted and had "taken its ply," before the storm fell 
upon it, and its fortunes came into the hands of the 
weak and the traitors. 

Edgar the Peaceful was hardly four years in his grave, 
before its woes began under Ethelred the Unready (979- 
1016). The Danes came back this time, not to ravage 
or to colonize, but to conquer. Ethelred the Unready, 
the king without counsel, brave and stirring, but want- 
ing his father's good sense and statesmanship, was a 
king after the kind of the later Carolingians. When he 
failed to check the Danes by fighting, he adopted the 
fatal foreign policy of buying them off, and thought to 



190 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. d. 959-1002. 

frighten them by the shameful and fatal massacre of 
St. Brice's day (Nov. 13, 1002). But the Danes them- 
selves were no longer what they had been. From a 
swarm of separate adventurers, like the Ragnars, and 
Rollos, and Hastings of a hundred years before, they, 
too, had grown, by their successes, into organization at 
home. It was now the king of Denmark, Sweyn the 
son of Harold, who brought the strength of the North- 
men to avenge St. Brice's day, and further, to add Eng- 
land, as a kingdom, to his kmgdoms in the North. He 
drove out Ethelred from England ; and after the death 
of Ethelred's nobler son, Edmund Ironside (1016), Cnut, 
the Dane, became king of the English, and England 
became a dependency of Denmark 

What the Danes began, their Latinized kinsmen, the 
Normans, continued. For two hundred years from Cnut's 
accession, with one short interval, the reign of Edward 
the Confessor and of Harold, foreigners were kings of 
England — Danes, Normans, Angevins. Yet two things 
are observable during this time of foreign ascendancy. 
One is, that the kingdom of England, conquered though 
it be, is the proudest honour and most important portion 
of the possessions of its foreign king. The other is, that 
through Danish, Norman, and French rule, the English 
speech, the English usages, the English slow, resolute 
sturdiness of temper, are absolutely proof against the 
strong influences of a foreign court and a foreign territorial 
nobility, and even of foreign tribunals and of foreign 
clergy. The people had reached a toughness and consis- 
tency of character, and a strength of common ideas and 
habits, which enabled it to bear the rough assault. It did 
not become Danish, it did not become Norman or French. 
It was strong enough to absorb the genuine Norsemen 
fresh from the sea and forest ; it was strong enough to 



Anglo-Saxon Church. 191 

absorb tbe altered and more civilized Nortbmenof Wil- 
liam the Conqueror. For this education of the English na- 
tion, incomplete undoubtedly, but so distinctly marked, 
so deeply rooted, and so enduring, we are indebted mainly 
to the kings of Wessex, from Egbert to Edgar the 
Peaceful 

The strong personal influence of the West Saxon 
kings had much to do with uniting the English people. 
Personal influence, powerful at all times, was indispen- 
sable for a great national progress then. But there was 
another influence continually at work, not so manifest in 
historical incidents, but diffused through the society of 
the time, without which the policy of the kings would 
have had more to contend against. The great agency 
of fusion and unity v/as the Church. Its archbishops 
and bishops were in immediate relation with the king 
and his chiefs, their fellow counsellors and authoritative 
advisers ; its priests and monks were in close contact 
with the various classes and local subdivisions of the 
people, sharing their fortunes and their ideas, the one 
source of instruction to them and of culture. The 
Church had its fluctuations of vigour and decline ; of 
efforts after learning and goodness, and of corrupt stag- 
nation ; and, like everything else, it savoured of its age, 
of its rudeness, its incompleteness, its ignorance. But 
the Anglo-Saxon Church was eminently a popular 
Church. Its leaders were deeply concerned in the pub- 
lic interests of the state. More dispassionate and better- 
informed history has recognized in Dunstan, once the 
byword for priestly arrogance and cruelty, a genuine 
patriot and reformer to whom amends are due, the 
chosen friend and counsellor of the Wessex kings, espe- 
cially Edgar. Its saints appealed to popular sympathies, 
as sufferers at the hands of the heathen foes of England. 



192 Beginning of the Middle Ages. 

And it not only spoke, but it wrote in the mother tongue. 
The Anglo-Saxon New Testament, the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, the Anglo-Saxon homilies of Elfric, are all so 
many evidences of the way in which, in a manner 
scarcely known abroad, the English churchmen, acting 
it may be under the impulse given by Alfred, did honour 
to their own language, and tried to popularize knowledge, 
both rehgious and secular. 



CHAPTER X. 

RESULTS OF THE BREAK-UP OF THE FRANK EMPIRE — 
ARRANGEMENT OF EUROPE : THE PAPACY ; NEW 
KINGDOMS OF FRANCE AND GERMANY; ITALY ; THE 
SCANDINAVIAN AND SLAVE NATIONS. 

The effect of the break-up of the empire of the Franks 
under Charles the Great was twofold. It produced at 
once immense disasters ; and it led ultimately to new 
and healthy national divisions, adapted to the changed 
condition of Europe, and fruitful in great results. The 
disasters were great. For the moment the West relapsed 
into the confusion and lawlessness from which Charles 
had partially reclaimed it. Within its borders all was 
incessant war, a universal scramble for territories and 
dignities among great and small, kings and dukes, • 
bishops, counts, and abbots. There were vicissitudes of 
success or overthrow, continual changes of borders and 
lordship, continual and vain efforts after peace and law. 
Without, new and formidable forms of barbarian attack 
appeared. As we have seen, the second great tide of 
barbarian invasion had begun more and more to distress 



CHAP. X. Break-Up of Frank Empire. 193 

and alarm the West, now entering on the early stages of 
its civilization. Besiies the Northmen, increasing in 
numbers and in their enthusiasm for ^adventure, who 
were the terror of the sea coasts from the Elbe to the 
Mediterranean, where the work of ravage and plunder 
was taken up by the Saracens, a strange and terrible foe 
had appeared on the Eastern border towards the end 
of the ninth century. This was the horde of the Magy- 
ars, the Ungrians, ^/z^r/, like the Huns, of the Turanian 
and Turkish stock, and like the Huns, whose name they 
inherited, or with whom they were confounded, described 
as frightful and ferocious savages, sweeping like a de- 
stroying storm over the lands which they visited. Ger- 
many and Italy were most exposed to their desolations. 
Tliey were sometimes called in with reckless and dis- 
loyal selfishness to assist one German or Italian duke or 
count against his rival ; and once tempted into Germany, 
they rode — wasting, burning, slaying, through Germany 
even to the heart of Gaul. The Hungarians, or Magyars, 
were, after the Northmen, the great scourges of the ninth 
and tenth centuries. The power, the union, and the 
military capacity of the Carolingian kings were unequal 
to the work of controlling these savages. The fatal po- 
licy was adopted, with the Magyars as with the North- 
men, of buying them off for the time, a policy which 
ensured their speedy return, more eager and audacious 
than before. With internal division and anarchy, and 
the fury of Northern and Eastern savagery let loos? be- 
sides, the times we'e bad. The hopes and comparative 
order of Ciiarles's days were departed. " In that time," 
says one of the annalists, "the kingdom of the Franks 
was very desolate, and the unhappiness of men was 
multiplied daily. In many ways wretchedness and 
calar.iitv increased amono: men." - - - 



194 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. x. 

Amid this misery and confusion the internal condition 
of society fell back. Charles's policy for strengthening 
the influence of the Church held jts ground, but not his 
plans for reforming and purifying it. Great ecclesiastics 
were among the most powerful personages in these times, 
and some of them, like Hincmar of Reims (801-882), 
were not unworthy of their power. But with power 
and great place came in worldliness and corruption 
in increasing proportion as time went on ; and though 
as statesmen these great bishops were probably not 
worse counsellors, and often were more intelligent ones, 
with a natural leaning to order and peace, than the 
rough dukes and counts with whom they acted, yet the 
meaning and consciousness of their religious office be- 
came more and more lost in their secular greatness. 
They were not only bound to military service for their 
vast domains, but in spite of the stringent prohibitions 
found in the " Capitularies," they went to war them- 
selves. " Within thirty years," we are told, towards the 
close of the ninth century, "two archbishops and eight 
bishops died on the field of battle by the side of counts 
and lords." It is no wonder that their offices came to 
be regarded as temporal dignities which the king had a 
right to bestow, and by which he rewarded and bound 
his adherents. And it is no wonder that, as in the days 
of Charles Martel, only with increasing freedom, the rev- 
enues and titles of archbishoprics and great abbeys were 
accumulated on some great lay potentate, like the duke 
of Paris ; some formidable Avarrior, lik^ the lay abbot of 
St. Riquier; or some child of a powerful noble, like Her- 
bet of Vermandois. The steps so remarkably gained 
for culture and for intelligent study of religion under 
Charles, were not absolutely lost. In the great German 
schools, founded or encouraged by Charles the Great, 



CHAP. X. Bi'eak-tip of F?'ank Empire. 19 j 

Fulda, St. Gall, and Reichenau on thelake of Consta'^ce, 
at Old Ccrbey on theSomme, and its Saxon colony, New 
Cbrbey on the Weser, and in Gaul, at Reims and Or- 
leans, the habits of study and the taste for learning were 
kept up. German unwritten tradition was rich in legend 
and songs of war and adventure ; but German literature 
began in these cloisters, in the ninth and tenth centuries, 
with Latin and German glossaries, in translations of the 
Psalms, and paraphrases of the Gospel story, such as the 
version of Tatian's Harmony, the metrical harmony 
called " Heliand," the prose one oT Otfrid, and Notker's 
Psalter. Nor was there wanting bold and subtle thought, 
well or ill-directed, on philosophy and theology, in men 
like John Erigena, Gotteskalk, Paschasius, Radbert, and 
his antagonist Ratramn ; and the first-fruits of German 
erudition are seen in Raban Maur, the archbishop of 
Maintz, and his scholar Walafrid Strabo, all of them men 
of the ninth century, and most of them pupils of Fulda, 
Corbey or Reichenau. But no appropriate advance was 
made. Missionary enthusiasm, which had done such 
great things under Pipin and Charles, sensibly waned, 
though it still achieved some new conquests among the 
Norsemen and the Slaves. And that which was the dark 
side of Charles's character and times, loose ideas of the 
sancity of marriage and the obligations of purity and 
self-control, grew into increasing lawlessness and disor- 
der, in the times which followed him. Except in the 
strict discipline of the cloisters, when the cloisters were 
well governed, license reigned ; and the families of the 
great bishops were as scandalous as the courts of the 
kings and dukes. 

There was a power in the Church which might have 
been expected to bridle this flagrant laxity ; the more so 
as its claims to supreme authority were at this very time 



ig6 Begijining of the Middle Ages. chap. x. 

rising to their full height. The fall of the Carolingian 
power is marked by a remarkable and coincident ex- 
pansion of the central power in the Church. The power 
of the popes, which Charles the Great had done so much 
to encourage and strengthen, which had depended on his 
aid and had lent itself in return to his great plans, o-rew 
into a hitherto unknown strength, as the imperial system 
which he had founded broke up in the hands of his suc- 
cessors. From being submissive and obsequious under 
Charles, the popes became imperious and exacting under 
his children; and their enormous pretensions, spiritual 
and temporal, were supported by the appearance and 
reception of the great forgery known by the name of 
" False Decretals," a collection of precedents, professing 
to belong to the early centuries, and establishing the un- 
controlled power of the popes, not only over the whole 
organization of the Church, but over every other earthly 
authority. In Pope Nicholas I. in the middle of the 
ninth century (858-867), this idea of the popedom found 
its determined and energetic exponent; and though met 
and resisted with equal boldness, as by Hincmar of 
Reims, he undoubtedly established the foundations on 
which by natural sequence the pretensions of Gregory 
VII. — noble in purpose, though extravagant and mis- 
chievous, — and those of Boniface VIII. — extravagant and 
mischievous, but not noble, — were afterwards to be built. 
The growth of papal interference was to be aided by the 
anarchy and license which prevailed in every depart- 
ment of life. That interference might have been more 
justified, if it had been wisely and righteously exercised. 
The laxity of the marriage tie, and the monstrous facility 
of divorce, had long been one of the plague spots of the 
Frank kingdom. The popes, as Nicholas I., did some- 
limes interpose.their rebukes and their menaces. But 



CHAP.x. Power and Corruption of Church Rulers. 197 

their interposition was rare and partial ; it passed over 
the strong and dangerous, and fastened on those whom 
it was not unsafe to attack; it entangled itself with the 
political hostilities of the time ; and it too readily accept- 
ed hollow compromises to save appearances. The quar- 
rel of Nicholas I. with Lothar 11. of Lotharingia, about 
the ill-treatment of his wife, was made up under his suc- 
cessor, Hadrian II. (869) by an arrangement of which 
all parties must have known that its basis was false- 
hood. 

But this was not the worst. Much inefficiency and 
some compromises were not unnatural and almost in- 
evitable in those confused times. But the century which 
saw the pretensions of the popes growing to their most 
audacious height saw at its end the popes themselves 
reduced below the level even of the blood-stained and 
licentious princes of the time. Eome, the city, the 
sacred office, had been fought for, had been won and 
lost, by fraud, by corruption, by violence, by murder, 
more than once in the recent times. But now for more 
than half a century the influence of three women of 
infamous character, in league with ambitious nobles and 
profligate churchmen, was paramount over the throne of 
the Vicar of Christ, In the hands of the marquises and 
dukes of Tuscany, of the two Alberics, lords of Came- 
rino, of the consul Crescentius and the Roman demo- 
cracy, and at last of the counts of Tusculum, the pope- 
dom, bought and sold and rapidly passing from hand to 
hand by bloody revolutions or political intrigues, was 
treated as the inheritance or prize of whatever family or 
adventurer happened at the moment to be strongest in 
Rome. The wickedness and vileness which gathered 
round the Roman see in the ninth and tenth centuries 
are, with one exception, and that is the repetition of 



198 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. x. 

them in a more enlightened time, under Sixtus IV. Alex- 
ander VI. and Leo X, one of the most revolting profa- 
nations recorded in the history of the world. 

It seemed as if the popedom would share the fate of the 
empire of Charles the Great ; that the great office with 
its venerable traditions and its overweening claims would 
sink under the weight of its degradation and shame, 
and that the system of which it was the keystone would 
break up and perish. Two things saved it at this 
turning point of its history. One was the revival, under 
Otto the Great and his successors, of the imperial au- 
thority, with claims to chastise and correct abuses, to crush 
anarchy, and enforce order. At the price of the indepen- 
dence and the political hopes of Rome and Italy, the em- 
perors of the Saxon line, by imposing their yoke on the 
papacy, prevented it, at last, after a hard struggle, from 
becoming the heritage of the petty nobles of the neigh- 
bourhood of Rome. They did not reform the popes, 
but they preserved the European character of the pope- 
dom. The other cause that saved it was a moral one ; 
it was the growth and spread of a strong spirit of austere 
reform of manners in the Church itself. This was 
specially embodied in the great monastic order or " con- 
gregation " of Cluny, at the beginning of the tenth cen- 
tury, which had for its object the revival of purity and 
strictness in ecclesiastical life, and which spread with 
strength and rapidity throughout Europe. It was from 
men imbued with the spirit and severity of Cluny, Leo 
IX. and Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII., that the 
internal reform came which not only saved the papacy 
from becoming an Italian prince-bishopric, but made it, 
at once for good and evil, the great centre of spiritual 
power in the middle ages of Christendom. 

The undisguised rapacity and ambition which were 



CHAP. X. Claims and Degeneracy of the Popes. 199 

turning great Church offices into private possessions 
were acting equally in the political sphere. The dislo- 
cation of the empire extended much farther than merely 
to its great divisions. The instability and changefulness 
of the times opened a wide field for the aims and efforts 
of private and local interests. What the king was doing 
for his kingdom, what the duke and the count were each 
doing for his duchy or county, — separating it off accord- 
ing to his opportunity and for his own advantage, en- 
larging, overreaching, stealing at the expense of his 
neighbours, — that the petty lord or the mihtary retainer 
did according to his humble measure, in his own neigh- 
bourhood. There was a general loosening of the public 
bands which kept men together. There was a strength- 
ening of the separate centres and local seats of authority 
and power. The pretensions, just or unjust, of the small 
were of course swept away by the superior claims of the 
great, when the great were strong enough to enforce 
them. But on a large scale and on a small one, the ten- 
dency at this time to divide and dissociate was greater 
than that to aggregation and union. 

The times were unhappy and evil ; when no one could 
feel safe from war with his next neighbour, from oppo- 
site and irreconcilable claims on his allegiance, from the 
hopeless terrors of barbarian invasion ; when religion 
seemed to have exhausted its power to restrain men 
from evil, and had degenerated in its highest places into 
the vilest profanation ; when universal distrust reigned^ 
and no man felt secure from his brother's dagger and 
his wife's poison. Yet, though faint and weak, there 
were the gleams of a better hope. There had come in 
with Charles the Great the dim idea of the public inter- 
est, the claims of the res puhlica, the common weal, as 
di-stinguished from the pleasure or the ambition of kings 



200 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap x.. 

and great men. There had passed into the opinions and 
language of men, though it was over and over again 
rudely set aside, a notion of the duty of princes to con- 
sider the good of their subjects, and in their quarrels to 
remember the sufferings of the widows and orphans 
whom they made by their wars. The writers of Charles's 
own period, Eginhard his friend, and Nithard his grand- 
son — who write like men accustomed to affairs and who 
have not read for nothing their Roman models, — are in- 
deed more alive to these ideas than those who imme- 
diately follow them. But a step had been taken out of 
barbarism, and a beginning of better things made, when 
the idea of the public interest had been planted, at what- 
ever disadvantage, and however feebly, in the growing 
society of Europe. With Charles the Great, the turn of 
things had distinctly come. Henceforth ihcugh there 
was long to be, as much as ever, confusicn, misrule, and 
wretchedness, and weary ages of crime and war, a pro- 
gress is discernible, in some point or otner, in each gen- 
eration. There are steps backward, but the whole 
movement, .though intermittent and slow, is forward. A 
footing for Christian civilization was made for good. It 
was Christian civilization which was to have Europe — 
French, Italian, German civilization ; not the uncouth 
heathendom of the Slave tribes, Wends, Obotrites and 
Czechs — not tlie desolating barbarism of the Magyrs — 
not the unfruitful civilization of Cordova and Bagdad, 
the seats of the rival Caliphates of the Mahometan Em- 
pire. 

And the same disintegrating tendency which favoured 
the growth of a multitude of petty local powers, rejoicing 
in their isolation and independence, had also a larger 
and more beneficial result. It created a swarm of litde 
counts and lords. But it also helped a wholesome divi- 



CHAP. X. Grozolh of luca of Fiiblic Interest. 201 

sion between the naturally distinct portions of the Caro- 
lingian empire. It made the great nations. On the 
break-up of the empire, its parts sought, each according 
to its natural or inherited affinities, to group themselves 
into larger or smaller aggregations, marked off from one 
another by history, traditions, interest, and language. 
To the west of the Rhine we henceforth see the begin- 
nings and the growth of modern France; on the Rhine, 
and to the east of it, the beginnings and growth of 
modern Germany. 

A memorable document, known as the bilingual "Oath 
of Strasburg," (842, a year before the partition of Verdun), 
preserved to us in Nithard's contemporary history, is a 
measure of the degree in which, in point of language, 
the Western and Eastern portions of the Frank kingdom 
had gone asunder. When Louis the German and Charles 
the Bald exchanged solemn promises of mutual aid 
against their brother Lothar, these promises were con- 
firmed by the oaths of their soldiers ; and that each army 
might be witness of the transaction, these promises and 
oaths were pronounced in two languages, the languages 
of each host, German ( Tciidisca, DeiitscJi), and Roman 
[RojnaJia, Romance^ a language which has ceased to be 
Latin, and stands in the relation of an elder sister, to 
the modern languages of the West and South, — Proven- 
cal, Italian, French, Spanish, — which are known, in op- 
position to the Teutonic languages, by the common name 
of "Romance" languages. There are older fragments 
of German; but of the Romance class of languages 
the oath of Strasburg is the earliest known example. 
It indicates that by this time, the middle of the ninth 
century, the land of the Western Franks was preparing 
to become Latin " France," and its people, not Franks, 
but French. The Latin element, always predominant 



20 2 Be;^i lining of tJic Middle Ages. chap. x. 

in Southern Aquitaine and the Roman "Province," Pro- 
vence, and along the valleys of the Saone and Rhone, 
rapidly recovered its ascendancy north of the Loire, in 
Neustria, the land of the Seine, the Somme, the Oise, 
and the Marne. As soon as the strong constraint of the 
Eastern Franks and their great king was removed, Gaul 
began steadily and surely to break away from the union 
with Germany, which Clovis had first forced upon it. It 
brol^e into separate and independent, or almost inde- 
pendent, portions — kingdoms, dukedoms, countships ; 
all of them now, deeply and irrevocably, Latin. When 
the last of the great barbarian conquests, the settlement 
of the Northern sea-rovers at Rouen, gave a new pro- 
vince to Gaul, and introduced into it the new name of 
Normandy, the language which the new comers at once 
adopted, in exchange for their ancestral Scandinavian 
dialect, was not the Teutonic one of the old Franks, but 
tiie Romance tongue of Latinized Neustria, Then l3cgan 
the history of modern France; and the history of 
France was, for many centuries, the history of the 
aggregation and union of fragments : their attraction to 
a central nucleus, and the natural grouping round it 
of the nearer, the gradual annexation of the more dis- 
tant. The new nation began with a new dynasty. The 
long and obstinate struggle between the expiring but 
gallant Carolingians, the descendants of Charles the 
Bald, and the dukes of Paris, the sons of its deliverer. 
Count Odo, ended in the establishment cf the new line, 
which was to hold tiie royalty of France for 800 years. 
But it was the new line which made France. In the as- 
sembly of the States at Senlis, in May, 9S7, Hugh Capet, 
amid intrigues and treachery, and premature and sus- 
pected deaths, became king. In May, 1787, the first 
assembly of the Notables, bringing with it the doom of 



A. D. 987. Fj-ance and the House of Capet. 203 

Hugh Capet's house, met at Versailles. Between these 
two dates lies the history of the growth of the French 
nation, the development of French character, and the 
fusion into one realm of the French provinces. But the 
kingdom which Hugh Capet and his descendants created 
out of the ruins of the Carolingian empire of the Franks, 
monopolizing the Teutonic name of France, while it 
drove out the Teutonic language before the Roman, and 
fixed Latin ascendancy in Gaul, was far from being at 
once what it was to be. It was made up at first merely 
of the lands lying round its centre, Paris. Hugh was 
indeed crowned " king of the Gauls, Britons, Danes, 
Aquitanians, Goths, Spaniards, Gascons." When his 
son Robert was made king with his father, he is described 
as reigning over the West from the Meuse to the Ocean, 
And the style of "king of the Franks" was still main- 
tained. But Brittany was unsubdued. Normandy, at 
the very gates of Paris, was but a nominal dependency, 
in the hands of the strongest ruling family in Europe. 
Aquitaine was far off and held its own. The banks of 
the Saone and Rhone, the slopes of the Jura, and the 
valleys of the Southern Alps, were occupied by the ab- 
solutely independent kingdoms of Burgundy and Aries. 
The kingdom of France was still to be made when Hugh 
Capet became king ; it was then only taking its rise in 
small and insecure beginnings. The kingdom of the 
tenth century was to modern France what Vv'essex was 
to England before the days of Egbert. 

But while in the west of Europe Teutonic language 
and ascendancy had definitively failed to establish itself, 
and was retreating before the reanimated Latin and Keltic 
influences, Germany — though the Latin name of Tacitus 
for the nation hardly appears yet in contemporary history 
— was, in fact, constituting and shaping itself in the 



204 Bcginm)ig of tJie Middle Ages. chap. x. 

centre of Europe. It claimed both banks of the still 

Teutonic Rhine from source to mouth, though the west 

bank, Teutonic as it continued to be in language and 

character, was long to remain a dcbateable land, fiercely 

contended for by the eastern and western divisions of 

the Franks, and itself often inclining to the west. Three 

great central dukedoms. Saxony in the north, — Alaman- 

nia in the south up to the Alps of the St. Gothard and the 

Bernina range, — and between Saxony and Alamannia, 

the Eastern France, the later Franconia, the land of the 

Main and Neckar, together with the Thuringian and 

Swabian lands, — formed the nucleus of the great country 

which was to fill so large a space in history. It was 

flanked westwards, from the mouths of the Weser and the 

Scheldt to the sources of the iMoselle on the western slopes 

of the Vosges,by the dukedoms of Friseland, of the Ripua- 

rian Lotharingia between the Rhine and Scheldt, and of 

Lotharingia proper on the Moselle : that middle portion 

of the old Frank kingdom, the future Netherlands and 

Lorraine, which, though Teutonic in language and race, 

was continually shifting its allegiance and changing its 

masters. To the south and south-east Germany spread 

out into the almost royal dukedoms of Bavaria and 

Carinthia ; and it was fringed eastwards by a chain 

of border-lands, the ''marks,'' or marches between the 

Germans and the Slaves, and, behind the Slaves, the 

Poles, and the Turkish race of the Magyars. On the 

north of this broad border, between the Elbe and 

Oder, where the Nordmark and the Ostmark and the 

marches of Merseburg and Meissen, the lands which 

were to become Brandenburg and Silesia ; to the south, 

the Mahrenmark, the Ostmark, and the Steyer mark, the 

Moravia, Austria, and Stiria of later geography ; between 

these marchlands was the great dukedom, which was in 



CHAP. X. States and Kings of Germany. 205 

due time to become the kingdom of Bohemia. These 
lands were the later acquisicions of Germany. The 
process by which the Latinized Franks of Neustria were 
transforming Danish KortJunen into French Normajis^ 
was going on equally in the ninth and tenth century ixi 
these German marchlands. Out of the Germanized 
Slaves of the north and south, and the infiltration of 
German settlers in these outlying regions, were formed 
the races from which were to grow Prussia and Austria. 
The Germans, as we have seen, first had a separate 
king in the grandson of Charles the Great, Lndvig, or 
Louis the German, "the wise and just," (Siy-S/*"') 
appointed, in the early divisions of the empire, kmg of 
the Bavarians, who at the partition of Verdun (843) took 
all the lands and nations east of the Rhine. The king- 
dom of Germany was united for a moment with the 
Western kingdom under his son Charles the Fat 
(8S4-8S7) ; but when the two portions finally broke 
asunder at his death, the Germans chose for their king 
another of the Carolingian line, Arnulf, who also 
received the imperial crown at Rome in 896. The direct 
line of Charles the Great in Germany ended in the 
grandson of Arnulf, Louis the Child (911). Then by 
election of chiefs and people, " the people of the Franks 
and Saxons," the kingdom passed to popular and pow- 
erful dukes, first, Conrad of Franconia (911-918), then 
to his rival, Henry of Saxony (918-935), both of them 
connected by the female line with the Carolingians. 
Under them, in disaster, in success, in wars with the 
Western kings and dukes for the borderlands on the 
Rhine, in fierce conflicts with Slave Obotrites and 
Wends on the eastern marchlands, in common resist- 
ance to the terrible Hungarian ravages, the Teutonic 
nations, distracted as they were with internal feuds, yet 



2o6 Beginning of the Middle Ages. a. D. 936-973. 

grew together, and were from time to time united. But 
the greatness of the kings of the Germans — kings of the 
Franks they were still called — began with Henry's 
son and successor Otto (936). Not unworthy to share 
the title of the great ruler in whose steps he trod, Otto 
the Great was the renewer of the Empire of the West, 
the deliver of Christiandom from the barbarian scourge, 
the tamer of the tribes of the Eastern border, the 
reformer, in some measure at least, of the monstrous 
abuses which had grown up under the ecclesiastical 
rule of the worst of the popes. Under Otto, king and 
emperor, Germany may be said to have taken definitely 
the place which it was to hold in modern Europe in the 
middle and later ages. Otto, ambitious and imperious, 
yet noble-minded, generous, and a hater of wrong and 
disorder, became, like Charles, the type of a new kind 
of king in Europe. He was unsuccessful in his interfer- 
ence with the affairs of the Western Frank kingdom, — 
happily unsuccessful, for his success would have hin- 
dered the natural course of growth in the Latinized 
population of Gaul. But he grappled strongly and suc- 
cessfully with internal disloyalty. He put down the 
mischievous restlessness of the Slaves of the Eastern 
marches with a firm and stern hand, and sometimes with 
the pitiless rigour with which civilization meets the dangers 
of barbarian faithlessness. And he delivered Europe from 
the misery and shame of the Magyar desolations by a 
great victory which may rank with that of Aetius at 
Chalons over Attila, and that of Charles Martel over the 
Arabs at Poitiers. In the tremendous battle of the 
Lechfeld (August 10,955) near Augsburg, the Magyars 
learned in a bloody overthrow the strength and deter- 
mination of the Germans and their king. Otto was 
saluted on the field by his army as the Father of his land 



CHAP. X. Italy. 207 

and Emperor. The victory which delivered Germany- 
broke the Magyars of their habits of plundering and 
ravage, and was tlie first step to make them the Hunga- 
rian nation. Christian missionaries penetrated among 
them. King Geisa became their Ethelbert or Clovis. 
Fifty years later they had an anointed Christian king, a 
saint, St. Stephen; and the sacred crown of St. Stephen, 
received from Pope Sylvester (1000), became the emblem 
of one of the most famous of the kingdoms of Chris- 
tendom. 

Italy, imperial Italy, within whose borders it was ever 
held that an emperor must receive his crown, had ac- 
quired from the policy of Charles the Great an increased 
importance among the new nations. It awoke at his 
death to the desire of independence : a desire never to 
be extinguished, but which it was to take long ages to 
fulfil. Italy was still divided, as in the days of the Lom- 
bard kings, into a number of lordships, great and small. 
Each of the three grandsons of Charles the Great, either 
personally or in their children, had with the dignity of 
emperor claimed to hold Italy ; with Charles the Fat, 
(80S) it was lost to the Carolingian family. Then it 
seemed as if the days of the Lombards, whose name had 
not yet perished from the style of the kings of Italy, 
were coming back again. The dukes of two of the old 
Lombard dukedoms, Berengar of Friuli in the north, 
Guido of Spoleto in the centre, became rival claimants 
for the kingdom of Italy, such as it had been before 
Charles overthrew the Lombard Desiderius. For sixty 
years of turbulence and war the kingdom was fought for 
by pretenders, Italians, and foreigners from Provence 
and Burgundy. Rome was either in the hands of the 
popes, or of the people of Rome, or of some daring lords 
of the neighbourhood, who called themselves Consuls or 



2o8 Beginning of the Middle Age^. chap. x. 

Patricians. In this disorder Italy was but in the same 
condition as Germany or Gaul. But no Hugh Capet or 
Henry of Saxony was to arise and lay the foundations 
of a national kingdom in Italy. At Rome lay the spell 
which drew the invader ; at Rome were the great uni- 
versal interests which gave him good reason or pretext 
for coming. Rome was the seat "where emperors were 
wont to sit," and it was the emperor's first business to 
protect, to purify, to do right at Rome. And at the end 
of the Carolingian times, and the beginning of the tenth 
century, Rome was at the lowest depth of disorder and 
shame. Charles had come to deliver Rome and the 
popes from the oppression of the Lombard kings. In the 
middle of the tenth century, Otto, the greatest of German 
kings since Charles, claiming Charles's place and title, 
descended from the Alps to deliver Rome from scan- 
dalous popes and tyrannous nobles. More romantic than 
Charles, he came also to deliver and to marry a distressed 
and widowed queen, the good and beautiful Adelheid of 
Provence, whom the Lombard usurper, Berengar, as he 
is called, wished to force into a distasteful marriage. Otto 
extinguished again, as Charles had done, the power and 
claims of the Italian or Lombard king of Pavia and Ve- 
rona, Adelheid's enemy, the second Berengar. Crowned 
king of the Italians at Milan (951), he was crowned Em- 
peror of the Romans by the pope at Rome (962) ; he 
confirmed the rights of the Roman see, but he asserted 
in large terms those of the empire ; and he had his young 
son Otto II. also crowned emperor by the pope (967). 
But his coming, though it brought with it something of 
restored order, and also prepared the way for a reformed 
popedom, destroyed the chance of an Italian state. His 
coming riveted Italy to the empire, and the empire was 
henceforth to be kept in German hands, as the papacy 



CHAP, X. Italy — Scandinavian Nations. 209 

was for the most part kept in Italian. By the coronation 
of Otto, the two great powers were finally established, 
which, as it was supposed then and for ages afterwards, 
were indispensably necessary to govern the temporal 
and spiritual order of the world: the Holy Roman Em- 
pire, the Holy Roman Church. Instead of governing 
the world between them, as Charles and Otto dreamed, 
they were soon to meet in irreconcilable and fatal con- 
flict. Between them Italy was torn to pieces by domestic 
strife, and became the natural and accustomed prey of 
the strangers, coming of their own accord, or invited 
from within. For a short interval there arose the tur- 
bulent and brilliant liberty of the cities. Then came the 
tyrants, the Scaligers, the Visconti, the Sforzas, the Me- 
dici, the Borgias, the Farnesi ; and then the day» of the 
foreign dynasties. But never since Otto clenched the 
work of Charles, till our own times, has it been possible 
for Italy to be what her sister nations were. Modern 
nations were consolidated and bound together in their 
early stages, not always by the power, but by the idea 
and the presence of the crown. And the crown of 
Italy, the Iron Crown of Lombardy, the Golden Crown 
of the Empire, was always in the keeping of a stranger. 
What the fifth and sixth centuries were to the Teuto- 
nic nations, Goths, Franks, Burgundians — the period of 
the beginnings of their settled national life, 
— this the ninth and tenth centuries were to S-in'ina- 

V'an and 

the second great line of the barbarian move- ^'=^^e m- 

. tions. 

ment, the Scandinavian and Slave nations. 
It was the time which brought them to rest in the seats 
which they were henceforth to occupy. From wanderers, 
marauders, invaders, they did not indeed at once pass into 
citizens, but they became settlers, finding homes and 
founding a country in lands- which Were for the future to 



2IO Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. x. 

be called after their names. They did not, like the 
Franks and Goths, or even as much as the Anglo-Sax- 
ons, come into a heritage prepared for them by an older 
cultivation — a land of farms and vineyards, of cities, and 
the arts of peace ; and this, doubtless, affected their his- 
tory, and caused that comparative rudeness which clings 
still to the east of North Europe, But they felt the in- 
fluence of a more fixed order in the organized nations 
beyond them. From mere tribes and hordes they began 
to shape themselves into dukedoms and kingdoms. 
Around the great central state, the empire, mainly Ger- 
man, and in German hands, which represented the 
power and law of Western Europe, the names and boun- 
daries and rude political efforts of realms afterwards to 
be famous begin to appear. But, as in the case of Hun- 
gary just referred to, they appear only in very obscure 
forms and dim outlines. The Northmen, 
navlan^na- ' '^o^ Only in what is now Denmark but in 
tions: Den- what are now Norway and Sweden, were 

mark, JNor- ■' 

way, Swe- beginning to be welded together into dis- 
tinct nations, under the strong and fierce 
discipline of ambitious kings, like Harold Haarfager, 
the "Fair-haired," and his family, Eric "Blood-axe," 
Hacon, and Olaf (863-1000). The successes of their 
countrymen, who had won provinces and founded 
princely houses, the familiarity which their adventures 
had given them with the state and power of the empe- 
rors and kings of Christendom, turned their thoughts 
from the mere excitement of a rover's life to the desire 
of founding dominions at home, and bringing under the 
king's authority not merely the military service but the 
loose independence and the landed tenure of their wild 
countrymen. The attempts caused much resistance 
and great emigrations. But the kings carried their 



CHAP. X. Slave Natiotis. Poles. Russians. 2^l 

point: they became rulers over subjects. Wars did not 
cease, but they became more and more national ones, 
replacing piracy and private adventures. And the 
three Scandinavian kingdoms, as we know them, v/ere 
formed— frequently united, more or less, under a con- 
queror like Cnut, but always separate as nations. 

While the Northmen were shaping themselves into 
organized states among the mountains and on the fiords 
of Norway, the lakes of Sweden, and the heaths and 
islands of Denmark, the same thing was ^, 

. blave nations. 

taking place in the vast wilderness of pine- 
forest, marshes, and boundless plains south and east of 
the Baltic. We begin to see on the historical map of 
Europe, amid the crowd of ill-understood and forgotten 
names with which it is studded from the Oder and the 
Vistula to the Volga, belonging mostly to different 
branches of the great Slave family, two designations 
emerging, which were of no more account at the time 
than those around them, but which announce the begin- 
ning of two of the most famous nations of the modern 
world. Between Slave races of strange names, who were 
to become Lithuanians, Prussians, Pomeranians, — Letts 
to the north, Slovaks to the south, Czechs in 
Bohemia and Moravia, — another branch 
begins to change the name of Lechs {LJakeft), for that 
of Polaks, Poles, meaning in their own language, " the 
people of the plains," — the great plains of the Vistula. 
In the middle of the ninth century we begin to hear of 
Polish chiefs: at the end of the tenth there had arisen 
a Polish kingdom under a powerful and victorious king 
(Boleslas, 992-1025). Here its history begins — so full of 
turbulence and incorrigible anarchy within, of aggres- 
sion and tyrannous insolence without, and, perhaps, of 
all histories the most pathetic at its close. 



212 



Beghming of the Middle Ages, chap. x. 



Again, in the north-east, another name which was to 

become that of a mighty people, the natural antagonist 

of Poland, first its victim and then its de- 
Russia. T • ■ 1 -I rr-l 

stroyer, began to be distmguished. That 
famous name first appears in Greek and Latin writers of 
the ninth century, in the shape of an indeclinable word, 
ol 'Prjf, TO Twf " the Russ," as if it stood for some unin- 
telligible abstraction. It soon became famihar at Constan- 
tinople as the name of sea-rovers, whose fleets from the 
rivers of the Black Sea insulted and tlircatened the great 
capital. The early history of the Russians is dim and 
vague. But it seems almost certain that the process 
which created England and Normandy created that 
which was to become Russia. Scandinavian pirates and 
adventurers had become known on the Baltic coast, the 
"Varangian Sea," for their daring, ferocity, and strength. 
They were called in, or they conquered; they established 
themselves among the Finnish and Slave tribes ; they 
became masters and rulers; either as a dynasty or a 
race they gradually adopted, like the Normans, the speech 
of their Slave subjects. In a corner of that endless plain 
which stretches from Germany to the steppes of the 
Tartars and Mongols and thence to China, and of which 
the natural divisions are not mountains, but the streams, 
hundreds of miles in length, of deep and broad rivers, we 
hearof Ruric and his two brothers (about 862). They were 
Northmen, or, as the Slavonians called them, Varangians, 
the name by which the Northern bodyguard of the Greek 
emperors was known, who settled at Novgorod, as the 
Jutes settled in Kent and then Rollo at Rouen. The 
Russian Varangians conquered round about them, like 
their kindred in England and Gaul ; they pushed south- 
ward, driving the Turkish Chazars from Kiev on the Dnie- 
per, and making Kiev and Novgorod their tv/o chief citres. 



CHAP. X. Conversion of the North and East. 213 

Their northern habits prompted them to use the -great 
rivers for trade and war : by the Dnieper they carried on a 
brisk commerce with the Greek empire, and four limes 
(between 865 and 1043) their flotillas sailed to the Bospo- 
rus, ravaging its shores, and were beaten off with difficulty 
and loss. At this time arose the strange prophecy, 
vouched for at the time, "that, in the last days, the Rus- 
sians should become masters of Constantinople." The 
family of Ruric appears in the dim history as the counter- 
part to that of Rollo. Chief after chief kept up the 
inheritance of strength and the tradition of enterprise, 
and even ill-fortune did not check them. One of them, 
Swatoslav (955-973), attempted Constantinople by land. 
He was outmanoeuvred and driven back to the Danube 
by the Greek emperor, the Armenian, John Zimisces. 
Surrounded on all sides, and without hope of escape, he 
was forced to capitulate and sign a humbling treaty, just 
as long afterwards, Peter the Great, hemmed in on the 
Pruth by the Ottomans, was compelled to buy his release 
by ignominious conditions (171 1). But Swatoslav's 
defeat did not hinder, any more than that of Peter, the 
growth of the nation under his successors. After a short 
interval of bloody domestic war he was followed as 
"Great Prince" by the great Vladimir (973-1015), the 
conqueror, the legislator, the builder of cities and founder 
of schools ; who holds in the traditions of Russia the 
place held in England by Alfred, and on the Continent 
by Charles the Great and Otto. 

And about this time, the ninth and tenth centuries, 
had come over all these races a change as great as that 
of their political organization, and closely connected with 
it. " In these centuries," says Gibbon, "the reign of the 
Gospel and of the Church was extended over Bulgaria, 
Hungaria, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, 



214 Beginning of the Middle Ages. chap. x. 

Poland, and Russia.'' Their conversion went along with 
their introduction to civil life and order. Zealous and 
self-devoted missionaries, usually monks, from the West 
or East, carrying their lives in their hands, first came 
preaching to men who were becoming ashamed and 
alarmed at their barbarism, in the face of a civilization 
of which they felt the strength. In time the chiefs — from 
conviction, from^ feeling, or from imitation of the kings of 
the Franks and the emperor of the Greeks, were baptized. 
They encouraged the preachers of Christianity, and some- 
times enforced the profession of it by violence and penal- 
ties. But its spread was certain when it once began. It 
was brought to Denmark and Sweden by a devoted monk 
of Corbey on the Weser, Anschar (826-865). The kings 
alternately protected and opposed it, till at length it was 
firmly planted under Cnut. Introduced into Norway 
from England, it was imposed upon their people by the 
two kings, Olaf Tryggvason (955-1000) and Olaf the 
Saint (1019-1033). The apostles of the Bulgarians, Cyril 
and Methodius (862-885), were also the teachers of the 
Moravians and Bohemian Czechs. In 966, Micislav, duke 
of the Poles, was baptized. But among the Slave Wends 
between the Elbe and Oder, the efforts of the German 
emperors to Christianize them called forth a fierce revolt 
983-1066); and among them the missionaries had met 
little but martyrdom. Finally, in 988, the powerful 
Vladimir of Russia, M^hose grandmother Olga had al- 
ready brought Christianity from Constantinople to Kiev 
in 955, was baptized at Cherson, and received as his 
bride the Greek emperor's daughter. Russia henceforth 
became the great conquest and strength of the Eastern 
Church. The conversion of these last formed of the 
barbarian nations altered their relation to Europe. "The 
admission," says Gibbon, "of the barbarians into the 



CHAP. XL Conclusion. 215 

pale of civil and ecclesiastical society, delivered Europe 
from the depredations by sea and land of the Normans, 
Hungarians, and Russians. The establishment of law 
and order was promoted by the influence of the clergy ; 
and the rudiments of art and science were introduced 
into the savage countries of the globe." 



CHAPTER XI. 

CONCLUSION — RETROSPECT OF THE TRANSITION PERIOD 
BETWEEN THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE MIDDLE AGES. 

The history of the five centuries, from the end of the 
fifth to the end of the tenth, is the history of the efforts 
of the new nations of the West after organization, im- 
provement, and power. During this period, the Teu- 
tonic races found themselves under entirely new condi- 
tions. It had not been new to them to conquer, or to 
meet other races. They had already, in what we call 
their barbarous state, definite social usages and a kind 
of political organization. But for the first time they 
found themselves in close and permanent contact with 
an older and more perfect civil order, and a new religion. 
They found themselves, in their ignorance and inexperi- 
ence, in their eager curiosity and vigorous freshness of 
life, in contact with Roman learning and Roman art, in 
some parts with Roman institutions and Roman laws. 
And they found themselves under the spell of the 
mightiest, the tenderest, and most wonderful of religions. 
Thus, all that had been the familiar course of life during 
centuries of wandering, was changed. Wild as they still 
were, they settled, they became lords of lands and houses, 



2i6 Begmning of the Alii/dle Ages. chap, xi^ 

they began to learn and to know, they began to feel 
themselves becoming a commonwealth and a state. 

And by the end of the tenth century, the process, in 
its broad and essential points, was accomplished. The 
outlines of the new world that was to be, had become 
distinctly and permanently laid down. It had been 
doubtful whether it was to be Goths or Franks who were 
to be at the head of the new state of things, to give it its 
tone, to direct and control it. It had been the Franks, 
and not the Goths. It had been doubtful whether 
Catholicism or Arianism was to be the religion of the 
West. Arianism had disappeared, and had left, perhaps, 
too easy a victory to the Catholic Church. Again, it had 
been doubtful whether the new nations could stand the 
shock of barbarian pressure, outside and behind them ; 
whether Europe might not be, like Africa and Asia, a 
prey to the Saracens; whether the Northmen from the 
sea, and the Huns and Slaves from the deserts, might 
not desolate and sweep away the homes which Frank, 
and Goth, and Anglo-Saxon had made for themselves. 
The deluge had been stayed, not without loss, but for 
good and all. The Saracen had maimed wounded Chris- 
tendom in one of its finest kingdoms; he had spoilt, 
though not finally destroyed, the hopes of Spain. He 
long continued to annoy and threaten the shores of Italy; 
to penetrate even the passes of the Alps. But the Sara- 
cen had been arrested for ever by Charles Martel at 
Poitiers and Narbonne, by Charles the Great at the Ebro. 
The Northmen, the Slaves, even the Hu'ns or Magyars, 
had been drawn into civilization, which they had dis- 
turbed but could not overthrow. The imperfect civiliza- 
tion of the time had proved itself strong enough not 
only to check them, but to react upon them. It had 
been doubtful whether the new world were not to be an 



CHAP. XI. Conclusion. 217 

extension of Germany, from the Rhine over the whole 
West and South, to the Atlantic and Mediterranean, 
Further, it seemed at one time uncertain whether Ger- 
man speech, and German law, were not to prevail in 
Gaul and Italy, as they had prevailed in Britain, sup- 
planting the older languages and laws, or driving them 
out into the wastes or the mountains — whether a great 
German reproduction of the Roman empire, with its twin 
capitals of Aachen and Rome, were not to be supreme in 
the world. But this was not to be. The strength of the 
older society, and of the races in possession, had reasserted 
itself. Germany was indeed to be a great and mighty- 
nation ; but it was not to absorb the world. The Frank 
empire of Charles the Great was too loosely compacted 
to hold together as he had created it. It broke up, and 
was reconstituted in a different and very contracted 
shape, the Holy Roman Empire of the Saxon, Otto the 
Great ; the Empn-e as it was to continue until the begin- 
ning of this century, often a very important, but ambig- 
uous and uncertain element in the polity of Christendom. 
The lands where the Romans had been strong, were 
once more to show the influence of their imperishable 
language and thought. Italy was once more Italy, and 
not Lombardy ; but its destiny to be kingless, except 
with the mock title of a foreign, and often hostile ruler, 
had declared itself. It was no longer doubtful that West- 
ern France, so long the battle-ground between Latin 
and German influences, was to be Latin and not Ger 
man. It had finally shaken itself loose from Germany. 
Ittook a king out of its own great chieftains, and rejected 
the half-Teutonic line of Charles the Great ; it was to 
grow and become great under the kings of Paris, and not 
under the kings of Laon, much less of Aachen. The 
great Norse settlement on the Seine had become tho- 



2i8 Beginning of tiie Middle Ages, chap xi. 

roughly Latin. The combination of astuteness and prac- 
tical jrood sense with the old adventurousness and dar- 
ing of their blood, which was to make the Normans seek 
crowns in England, in Italy, and in the East, had already 
shown itself in the remarkable line of the dukes of Nor- 
mandy. And by the end of the tenth century, England 
had taken its shape and established its internal unity. 
Angles of the east, north, and midland, Saxons of the 
w^est and south, even the intrusive Norse settlers of the 
Danish districts, had become permanently bound to- 
gether, under the kings of the line of Egbert — Alfred, 
Edward the Elder, Athelstan, Edgar ; they had become 
that "English folk" and "English kin," who were soon 
twice to be made subjects of foreign conquest, and to be 
ruled by lines of foreign kings, but who were to turn their 
conquerors, even Normans, in a generation or two, into 
Englishmen. 

Finally with the ^'■ear 999, with Gerbert of Auvergne, the 
austere Cluniac monk, the most learned man of his time 
— mathematician, theologian, supposed wizard, magician, 
tutor of a Roman emperor and of a king of France, ec- 
clesiastical intriguer and ecclesiastical victim, the stout 
opponent, the stout asserter of the claims of the Roman 
see, placed in it as a reforming pope by the title of Syl- 
vester II. through the influence of the Roman emperor, 
Otto III. — a new line of popes begins. We have left be- 
hind the popes who cringed to the Carolingian princes 
when they were strong, and threatened them when they 
were weak. We have left behind the creatures of pro- 
fligate women, and their associates. There 
are stul some forty years to come of the li- 
centious or simoniacal nominees of the Counts of Tuscu- 
lum. But the German emperors on the one hand, the 
monks of Cluny on the other, had already embraced 



CHAP. XI. Conclusion. 



219 



strongly the idea of what the pope ought to be ; and 
this idea, which was to give to the popedom its modern 
importance, was on the eve of being realized. 

Thus the present sketch has been brought down to the 
middle ages. In 962, Otto the Great was crowned em- 
peror at Rome, and the mediaeval empire began. In 975, 
was the end of the powerful and pea ;eful reign of Edgar, 
who left a united England, which his son Ethelred was 
to lose through misgovernment, and the stranger was to 
conquer and spoil, but which neither could destroy or 
disintegrate. In 987, Hugh Capet became king of 
France. In 995 ended the long reign of fifty years of 
Richard, duke of Normandy, the reign which had seen 
such great revolutions, in which Normandy had thrown 
its sword into the balance between Germany and France, 
and had determined the victory of the dukes of Paris ; a 
reign which left Normandy the most vigorous province 
of Gaul, full of intellectual activity and ambition. We 
are not far from the crusades. The seeds of feudalism 
have been thickly sown, and have taken deep root. We 
are not far from the strife of investitures, the eventful 
quarrel between pope and emperor, Geogory VII. and 
Henry IV. We are not far from from the beginning of 
the scholastic philosophy, from Berengarius and Lan- 
franc, Anselm and Abelard We are not far from those 
massy and solemn churches, in Normandy, Germany, 
France and England, in which the architecture of the 
middle ages took its beginning, and which stand the 
enduring monuments of what the new nations had 
grown to be ; of the ideas of power, strength and 
grandeur which had been developed among them, and 
to which they sought to give expression. 



INDEX. 



ARA 

AACHEN, or Aix-la-Chapelle, 
144, 155, 156 

iEgidius, 37 

Aetius, 22; defeats Attila, 23,24; 
murdered, 25 

Africa, 18, 19 

Agi ulf, Lombard Icing, 42 

Agricultural colonies, 51, 69, 117 

Alamanni, 4, 38, 86 

Alans invade Gaul, 14; Spain 15 

Alaric, the West Goth, 10 ; invades 
Greece, ib. ; projects a barbarian 
state, ib.; defeated by Stilicho, 11; 

. master-general of lUyricum, 13; 
sieges and sack of Rome, 12 ; 
death, 12 ; his sayings, 12 ; makes 
an emperor, Attalus, ib., 26 

— II., W. Goth, at Toulouse, pub- 
lishes abridgment of Roman Law, 

54 . 

Alboin. 41 

Alcuin, 119, 140 

Alfred, 1B3 ; checks the Danes, 186; 
restores learning, ib.; greames-*, 
ib. ; creates navy, ib.; legislation, 
186 ; popularizes knowledge, 192 

Alodial, 179 

Angles, 19, 63, 64 

Anglo-Saxon, literature, 192; church, 
lb. 

— conquest 63; different from other 
barbarian conquests, 64.; more 
complete, 66-67; heathen conquest, 
68 

Anschar, 214 

Anthemius, 27 

Antonines, 5 

Aquileia destroyed by Attila, 23 

Aquitaine, 16, 35, 39, 85, 203 

Arabians, 82 ; v. baracens 

220 



BAR 

Arcadius, 9 

Arianism, 10, 36; extinguished in 

Spain, 80; among the Lombards, 

42 
Arnulf, Emperor, 162, 205 

— Saint, of Metz, 91 
Assemblies, inoots, 46; malli, 131, 

181, 203 
Athelstan, 172,186; sisters married 

to Continental princes, ib. 
Athaulf, Gothic leader, 13, 16, 68 
Attalus, Alaric's mock-emperor, 11, 

14, 26 
Attila, 20; character, 21; attacks 

the west, 22 ; defeated at Chalcns, 

ib.; invades Italy, 23; ihr;atens 

Rome, 23 ; death, ib. ; named 

Scourge of God, ib. 
Augustine of Canterbury, 70 

— Saint, of Hippo, death of 17; 
his ' city of God,' 141 

Austrasia, or Austria ; word among 
Franks and Lombards, 88 ; Ger- 
man influences prevailing in, 88, 
superiority over Neustria, 90, 91 

Austria (modern), 205 

Avars, probably Huns, 24, 105 ; con- 
quered by Charles the Great, 123 

Avitus, Bp. of Vienne, 49 

— Emperor, 27 



BARBARLAXS, Roman, know, 
ledg^ of them, 2 ; migrations, 
3 ; invade Empire, 4 ; increasing 
boldness in fourth century, 6 ; in-, 
vasions in ihe fifth, 7-19 ; three 
great divisions of invaders, 8 ; 
power in the Roman State, 7, 13 ; 
greatness of •consequences of tha 



Ifidex. 



221 



CER 

invasion and settlement^ 43, land 
tenure, 45; effect on them of 
Christianity, 51-55 ; Roman law, 
54 ; Latin language, 57 

Basileus, title of Eastern Emperor, 
112 ; taken by Edgar, 188 

Basques, 85 

Bavaria, 122, 204, 208 

J'ede, 71, 135 

Beiisarius, 38, loi 

Berengar, King of Italy, 207, 208 

Bilingual population, 56; oath of 
Strasburg, 156, 201 

Bishops, leaders on fall of Empire, 

48 ; influence on the barbarians, 

49 ; secularity among the Franks, 

94. 132 
Bocland, 179 
Boethius, 35, 59 
Bohemia, 144, 204, 211 
Boniface, apostle of Germany, 96, 

135 

— Lount, invites vandals, 17 

Bretivalda, 177 

Britain, ieft by Romans, 18 ; invaded 
by the Anglo-Saxons, 62 

Brittany, 18, 203 

Brunihild, 89 

Bulgarians, probablj"- of Turanian 
origm, 23 ; mixed with Slaves, 105 

Burgundians, 3 ; cross the Rhine, 
13 ; kingdom founded, 14, 34; the 
Burgundies, 14; Arians, 35; de- 
feated by Clovis, 37 ; kingdom 
conquered by the Franks, 39, 87 ; 
law, 55 

Byzantine, phase of the Empire, 106 

Byzantium, 108 ; v. Conbtantinople 



C^SARIUS, Bp. of Aries, 49, 52 
Canterbury, 70 
Capet, Hugh, 203 
Capitularies, 132, 156 
Carinthia, 162, 204 
Carolingian line, beginning, 117^ 

tables of, 92, 146, 161, 163; 

division among sons of Charles 

the Great, 147; quarrels, 157; 

threefDld division of empire, 156 ; 

decay of, 158; fails, 172; last, 

Louis le Faineant, 174 
Carthage, 17, i8 
Cassiodorus, minister of Theoferic, 

33 



Cerdic, house of, 186 



CON 

Ceorl, 179 

Chalons, battle of, 22, 23 

Charles Martel, 91 ; overthrows 
Arabs at Tours and Poitiers, ib.\ 
appealed to by the pope, 94 

— the Bald, K. of West Franks, 
148, 150, 151. 158 ; assailed by the 
Northmen, 158, 164; emperor, 158 

— the Fat, 169 

— the Great, crowned as a boy by 
Pope Stephen II., 96 ; sole king, 
118 ; biography by Eginhard, 119 ; 
not a " French king," 120 ; 
Teutonic character, ii>. ; his 
wars : barbarians, S- raccn. Saxon, 
Slaves, 121; Lombard war, 124 ; 
alliance with the popes, 125-127 ; 
crowned emperor, 127 ; idea oif 
empire, 130 ; legislation, 132 ; 
Church government, 136 ; as em- 
peror, 138 ; encourages learning, 
139 ; love of German language, 140; 
his great faults, 142 ; extent of 
empire, 142 ; burial, 144; legends 
about him, 145 ; failure of the 
imperial scheme, 147 

— the Simple, 164, 170, 171 
Childeric III., last Merovingian, 96 
Chilperic of Soissons, 85, 90 
Chosroes,or Khosrou Nushirvan, 108 
Church, influence on the barbarians, 

47-49; mischiefs of barbarian pa- 
tronage, 56,85; coarseness, 52; 
Ang o-Saxon. 72, 192 ; corrupt 
under Merovingians. 133 ; reform 
by Charles the Great, 136, 137; 
under Otto the Great, 198, 199 

Clair, St., sur-Epte, treaiy of, 171 

Claudian, 59 

Clergy, bond between Franks and 
Latins, 84 

Clotilda, 38 

Clovis, Chlodvig-Louis, 37 

Cluny, order of, 198 

Cnut, 211, 214 

Columban .St., 70, 135 

Commendation, 177, 180 

Conrad of Franconia, King of Ger- 
many, 205 

Confederates, barbarian, 19 

Constantine, 4, 7, 113, 114 ; forged 
"Donation," 98 

— Porphyrogenitus, 105 

— Pretender in Britain, 18, 19 
Constantinople, New Rome, 6, 26, 

32,98 
Constantius, 114 



222 



Index. 



EA3 

Conversions, Goths, 9 ; their Arian- 
ism, ib., 20, 36. 58 ; Vandals, 19 ; 
Burgundians, ib. ; Franks under 
Clovis, 38; ©f Lombards from 
Ananism, 42 ; of the English, 69 ; 
of the Slaves, 105 ; of the Saxons, 
121 ; of the Germans, 135 ; of the 
Hungarians, 207; of the Scandi- 
navian and Slave nations, 213, 214 

Corbey, 14^, 207, 214 

Councils, national Spanish, 54, 8i 

Count Boni ace, 17 

Counts, Comites, Graf, 45 

— " Frisian shore" 170 

— Vermandois, 172, 173 

Crown of St. Stephen of Hungary, 
207 ; Golden, of Italy, 209 ; Iron, 
of Lombardy, 209 

Cyril and Mcthoclius, apostles of 
the Slaves, ig6, 214 

Czechs, 211, 214 



r\ 4NEGELD, 169, 170 

-^-^ Danelagii, 169, 183, i8i, 1S6 

Danes, 79 

— appear in England, 183 ; in Kent, 
183 ; drive Alfred into the 
marshes, 183; defeated, peace of 
Wedmore, ib.; alternate between 
England and France, 184 

Decius, 4 

DcsiJerius, 124, 207 

Diocletian, 7 

Duchy of Normandy, 171 

Dukes, Duces, Hecrzog, 48 ; Lom- 
bard, 4->, 42 

— Alamannia, 204 

— Austrasia, 87, 88 

— iJavaria, 122, 204 

— Carinthia, 204 

■ — Friseland, 169, 204 

. — Normandy, 171 

- — Paris, 172, 202 

^-Saxon/, 204 



EASTERN EMPIRE, 7, loi ; 
strength, 102; losses, 103; pre- 
serves civilization, 104 ; separation 
frjm the West, 115, 127 
East Goths, 33 ; led by Theoderic 
into Italy, ib.; kingdom in Italy, 
ib.; attempt at fusion with Ita- 
lians, 34; destroyed by Belisarius 
and Narses, 39 



ERA 

Ebroin, 90 

Ectkssis of Heraclius, 208 

Edgar, 179; called Lnperator and 
Basileus, ib. 

Ediieling. 179 

Edward the Elder, i83 

Egbert of Wesscx, 178, i83 

Eginhard 95, 119, 126, 200 

Elbe, 62,66 

Emp;ror, made by Alaric, 11, 26; 
by Ricimer, 27, 28 ; by Gundobad, 
28 ; by Orestes, 28 

Emperors, Eastern, despotic powers 
of, 112 ; religious supremacy, 114 ; 
effects, 115 

England, conversion of, 69 ; unity, 79 

— united under Egbert, 178 ; social 
constitution, 179; publi:; assem- 
blies, loi ; strength under disas- 
ter, 191 

Eorls, 178 

"^pte, boundary of Normandy, 171 

Erigcna, 195 

Ethel., 179 

Ethelbert, 70 

Ethelfleda, Lady of the Mercians, 
188 

Ethdfrith, 65 

Euric, 16, 33 

Exarch, Exarchate, 40, 102 

Eyder, river, 76, 143 

u Tj'ALSE DECRETALS," age 
X? and influence, 196 

Fins, 212 

Florence, Stilicho, defeats Rada- 
gais at. 10, 13 

Folcland, 179, 182 

Fontenailles, or Fontenoy, battle,i55 

France, Francia, 84, 87, 118 ; vari- 
ous senses of the term, 176 ; mo- 
dern kingdom, 203 

Franconia, 204, 205 

Franks, first appearance, 4 ; con. 
I'ederacy in fifth century, 15; ri- 
valry with Goths 32, 210; Catho- 
lics against Arians, 36 ; prevail 
over the Goths, 38, 39 ; use Roman 
law, 53 ; long maintain Teutonic 
character, 57;/'V««/tjand French., 
58 ; Franks, leaders in the West, 
75, 83, 85 ; favour the clergy, 85 ; 
divisions of Fiank kingdom, 86; 
Frank empire under Charles the 
Great, 143 ; end of their dominion, 
122 ; estimate of themselves, from 
preface to Salic law, ib. . 



Index. 



223 



HEL 

Fredegund, 89 

Friseland, Frisia, 169, 204 

Fri ians, 63, 135 

Fulda, monastery, 122, 135, 195, 196 



GARIBALDI, Bavarian and 
Lombard name, 125 

Gascoiiy, 85 

Gau, 45 

Geisa, king of Hungary, baptized, 
207 

Genseric, the Vandal, invades and 
conquers Africa, 17; founds Van- 
d )1 kingdom, piratical power in 
the ]MeU terranean, 18 ; defeats 
Roman fleets, 25 ; alliance with 
Attila, 22 ; sacks Rome, 24 ; dies, 

25 

Gerbert, Pope Sylvester II., 207, 218 

German language, early examples, 
135, 140, 195; Charles the Great's 
fondness for, 141 

Germany, modern, created by Caro- 
lingian kings, 117, 204 

Glycerius, 28 

Goths, 3 ; first of barbarians Chrst- 
ianized, 9; Arians, ib., 36; Gothic 
Bible, 9 ; possibility of a Goihic 
empire, 16; rivalry with Franks. 32, 
216; Gothic kingdoms, 35 ; driven 
out of Gaul by the Franks, 38, 39 ; 
in Roman service, 47; literature 
destroyed in Spain, 80 ; flourish- 
ing kingdom in Spain, 81 

Gotteskalk, 195 

Gregory the Great converts the 
Lombard king, 42 ; sends Auguj^- 
tine to England, 70 

Gregory, of Tours, 52, 58, 60, 72, 84 

Guadalete, battle of 83 

Cu:sts, barbarian, 19, 46 

(jjndeuch, 15 

Gundobad, Burgundian king, 15 ; 
lawgiver, 35 : nephew of Ricimer, 
27 ; succeeds him as Patrician, 
lb. : nominates Roman emperor, 
ib.; defeated by Clovis, 38 

Gundochar, 15 

Cuntram, 85 

Cuthrum, 186 



HAMPSHIRE, 65 
Harold Haarfager, 210 
Hegira, 82 
Heliand, 195 



KIE 

Henoticon, of Zeno, 114 

Henry, of Saxony, 208 

Heraclius, 105-106; his line, 108 

Hsrmanri , 14 

HerminigdJ, 80 

Herules, 3 ^ 

Hi:icmar of Reims, 196 

Hippo, 17 

Homage, 173, 183 

Honoria, 22 

Honori'.is, 9, 10, 13, 18 

Hugh Capet, 174; chosen king at 
Senlis, 203 

Hungary, Hungarians or Magyars, 
103, 166, 193; ferocious inroads, 
193; devastate Germany and Gaul, 
ib. ; defeated by emperor Otto at 
the Lechfeld, 208 ; converted, 209; 
K'ng Geisa, ib.; K ng (St.) Ste- 
phen, ih. 

Hun';, Turanian or Turkish race, 
8, 9 ; enemies of the Goths, 9 ; in, 
vasion of empire under Attila, 20- 

22 ; break up of Attila's empire, 23 



TCONOCLAST, no 

X — emperors, no, 115, 116, 128 

Ida, 65 

lona, 70 

Isaurian line of emperors, 111,112,113 

Italy invaded by W. Goths, under 
Alarie, 9 ; by Huns, under Attila, 
20; by E. Goths, under Theoderic, 
33; reconquered by Belisarius, 39 ; 
invaded by Lombards, 40; Rome, 
Jtilian cap tal, 41 ; inva'^ed by 
Franks, 84; invaded by Pipin, 96; 
by Charles the Great, 117-122 ; 
imperial portion, 147, 155 ; invaded 
by Otto the Great, 208, 209 , inde- 
pendence destroyed by the revived 
empire of Otto, 2..8, 209. 



T ERUSALEM, fall of, i 

J Jews banished from Spain, 80 

Judith, the Bavarian, empress of 

Louis the Pious, 152 
Jul an, 4, 7 
Julius Nepos, 28 
Justinian, 40 ; origin, 101; greatness, 

102 
Jutes, 19, 63, 64 

KENT, 64 
Kiev, 214, 216 



224 



Index. 



MAG 

Ty^T, 179 
J-^ Laon, 173, 174 
Latin language, influence on biiba- 

r.ans, 55 
i.atinizing influences, 56; Latins 

employed 'y the Fran'r^s, 56. 85 
Law, Roman, 29; Lombard, 42; 

barbarian laws, 46, 53; Spani-h, 

80; />eKsonal\3.\v changed into /citv 

of the land, ib. 
J^azzr, 179 

Le hfekl, battle of, 206 
Lechs, Lj'dken, afterwards Poles, 

211 
I eo, Pope, arrests Attila, 23 ; but 

not Gsnseric, 24 

— the Isaurian, 94-110 
Leovigild, Spanish king, 80 
Litz, 179 

Liutorand, 93 

Loaf-eater, 180 

Lombardy, name of Italy, 148 

Lombards in Italy, 40; fail in 
uniting with the Italian , 41 ; 
duked m, 42 ; Arians converted, 
ib.; laws, ib.; results of con- 
quest, ib.; hated by Italians, 77; 
relations to Franks, 86 ; quarrel 
with tha Pop.s, 93; humbled by 
Pipin, 97 

Lorraine, v. Lotharingia 

Lo har I., failure of linj, 157 

Lothar king at Laon 173 

Lothiringia, from L.thar II, 157, 
159, 204 

Louis the P"ous, 150; emper r, 
151 ; associates hii son Lothar, 
ib. : prosperous beginnings, 152 ; 
marries second wife, family quar- 
rels, 152 ; the Liigenfeld, 154 ; 
partitions, 154 ; death, ib. ; his 
sons, I.othar, Louis the German, 
and Charles the Bald; quarr.l, 
battle of Fontenailles, 155 ; par- 
tition of Verdun, 157 

— d'Outremer, 172, 173 

— the Child, 159, 208 

— the German, i6o ; line ends in 
Charles the Fat, 160 

Ludvigslied, 170, 184 
Liigenield, 153 



MACEDONIAN line of empe- 
rors, 114 
Magyars, v. Hungary' 



OTT 

Mahomet, 82, no 

Majorian, 26 

Malii, 131, 180, 183 

]\Tark, 45, 204 

IMayors of the Palace, 89 

Mercia, 73, 176 

Merovingians, 84; degenerate, 88; 

end of the line, 95-98 
Mctz, £6, 91 

il/Zc^'/^^az-r/i-Constantinople, 99 
Mis si, 131 
Missionaries, seventh and eighth 

centuries, 20, 134; in ninth and 

tenth, 196, 213 
Monasteries, keepers of literature, 

51, 62 
Monophysite controversy, 127 
Monoihelile controvoisy, 114, 127 
Moot, 180, 181 



^TARBONNE, 16,92 
% Narses, 39, 41, loi 
Netherlands, 204 
Ncustria, 87, 89, 91, 202, 205 
Nicolas I., Pope, 117, 197 
Nithard, 200, 201 
Nordmark, 234 

Normandy, duchy of, founded, 171 
Norsemen, or Danes, invasions of, 

165 ; in Gaul, 168, 170 
Northumbia, 65 ; power, 67 
Norway, kingdom, 210 
Notker's German Psalter, 195 
Novgorod, 212 



OBOTRITES, Slave race, 106 
Oder, 4 
Odocer, 28; king in Italy, 30; 

overthrown by Theoderic,the East 

Goth, 31 
Offa, 176 

Olaf of Norway 214 
Olga, converted, 214 
Olybrius, 27 
Orleans, Altila's siege of, 22; schools, 

195 
Ostmark, 204, 205 
Otfrid, 141 
Otfrid's German harmony of the 

Gospels, 141, 195 
Otto the Gr.at, King of Germany 

and Emperor, 17:;. 206 ; defeats the 

Hungarians at the Lechfeld, ib. ; 

reforms the popedom, 198, 206 



Index. 



225 



RHI 

Otto II., 198 

— Ill , opens tomb of Charles the 
Great, 145 

DAG US, 45 

■'■ Paris, Clovis' capital, 88; 
Dukes ot, 171, 202 

Patricians, barbarian, 25-28, 30; 
Roman, 38, 126 

Pauliuus at York, 70 

Pavia, 41 

Pentapolis, Italian, 97 

Persia, wars with by Empire, 107 ; 
by Heraclius, 108; conquered by 
the Saracens, 109 

Photius, quarrel with Pope Nicolas 
I., 116, 117 

Pipins — Pipin of Landen. qo, 91 ; 
table of family, 92 ; Pipin of 
Heristal, 90, 91 ; Pipin the Little, 
94 ; king, crowned by Pope Ste- 
phen II., 96; policy, 117 

P lac it a, 131 

Poiiiers, near, Clovis defeats the 
Goths, 38; Charles Martel the 
Arabs, 91 

Poland, beginning of history, 211 

Poles (Lechs, 211 ; converted, 214 

PoUentia, Stilicho defeats Alaric at, 

ID 

Popes, growing independence of, 41; 
Pope Leo I., 23, 24; Pope Gregory 
the Great, 42, 69 ; Pope Z ■ charias 
sanctions depositon of Childeric 
III., 96: Stephen II. crowns 
Pipin and his sons, ib. ; supported 
by Franks against Lombards, 97 ; 
Pipin s grant of lands, /(J.; Nicolas 
I., 116, 196; Leo III. crowns 
Charles emperor, 126; Sylvester 
II., 207, 218 ; power strengthened 
by Charles the Great, 196 ; sup- 
ported by the forged " Fn!se 
Decretals," ih. ; growth of their 
power, 196 ; degenerate, 198 ; re- 
form of, 198, 199 

Prussia, 205 

RADAGAIS, 10, 13 
Ravenna. 11. 22. 41 
Reccared, converted from Ari^n'sm, 

83 

Reichenau, 160, 195 
Reims, 38. 87, 196 
Remigius, Bp. ot Reims, 48 
Rhine, 15, 201, 204 



SCO 

Ricimer makes emperors, 26, 27 

Ripuarian Franks, 37, 53 

Robert of Paris, 170 

Rois Faineants , 89, 95 

Hollo, or Rolf, 170 ; when first heard 
of, ib. ; occupies Rouen, 171 ; ob- 
tains Normandy Iroai Charles the 
Simple, ib. ; homage, ib. ; Duke 
of Normandy, ib. 

Roman Empire, division of, 6 ; 
broken into by the barbarians, 
14-19 ; giving way, 19 ; end in the 
West (476), 29 ; idea and institu- 
tions partly survive, 30, 31 {v. 
PLisrern Empire); revival in 
Charles the Great, 126; idea of 
unii;y, ico, 129; levived by Otto 
the Great, 208, 209 

— law, 5, 30; eifect on barbarians, 
53 ; E. Goths in Italy, 53 ; W. 
Goth-; in Spa n, ib. 

Romana, language, 156, 201 

Romance, family ol languages, 60, 
76, 77, 156, 201 

Rome, fall of, separating ancient and 
modern liisury, 2 ; decay of em- 
pire, 5 ; power leaving it. 7 ; sieg s 
and sack by Alaric. 11; threatened 
by Attila, 23 ; second sack by 
Genseric, 24 ; third sack by Rici- 
mer, 26; Italian capital, 41 ; seat 
of empire, 127, 156, 208 

Romulus Augustulus, 17 ; deposed, 
ib. 

Rouen, 170, 202 

Ruric, 212 

Russians, origin of, 202 

SALIAN Franks, 37 ; Salic law, 
53. 175 
S .ssanian kings ot Persia, 107 
Saracens, invasions of, 82, 108, 109; 

checked at Constantinople, by 

Leo the Isaurian, no ; by Charles 

Martel at 1 'oitiers, 91 ; by Charles 

the Great, 121 
Saxons, old, 6j, 64 ; conquered and 

converted by Charles, 121, 122; 

in England, 64-68 
Sa.\ony, Dakes of, 204, 505 
Scandinavian nations. 2^9; becoming 

organized kingdoms, 210 
Schism of East and V/cst, 117, 128 
Schools, monast c and cathedral, 59; 

Palatini of Charles the Great, 139 
Schools in Germany, 141 
Scourge of God (_ Attila;, 23 



:2 36 



Index. 



THE 

Senlis, Hugh Capet elected king at, 

203 

Seventh century, poverty of, 134 

Sidoiiius, ApoUinaris, 60 

S gambrians, 4 

Slave races, 8, 209 ; second barba- 
rian wave ot invasion, 8; Justinian, 
a Slave, 100; races press on Eastern 
Empire, 105; gradually t-ettled in 
Empire, 106 ; convened, 107 

Slovaks, 211 

Soissons, 38, 87, 154 

Spain, invaded Ly Vandals, 15 ; 
West Goths, 16 ; Gothic kingdom 
of, 17; councils, Toledo, 54, 80; 
tragic course of history, 79 ; con- 
version of Reccarcd Irotn Arian- 
ism, 80; intolerance 81; flourishing 
kingdom, 82 ; conquered by the 
Saracens,83; Christian Kingdoms, 
84 

Stilicho, 10, II 18 

Strasbu g, oath of, 156, 201 

Sueves invade Spain, 14; driven 
to the highlands by Goths, 16; 
subdued by Leovigild, 184 

Sussex, 64 

Swatoslav, 213 

Syagrius, defeated by Clovis at Sois- 
sons, 38 

Sylvester TI., 207, 218 

Symmachus, 33 

TACITUS, 5 
Tatian, 195 

Testry, battle of, 90 

Teudisca, language, 156, 201 

Teutonic races, 8 ; Goths and Franks, 
32 ; earliest kingdoms Arian, ;-,6; 
early Teutonic oraanization, 46 

Theodore, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 71, 134 

Theodoric, East Goth, formed king- 
dom in Ital}', 32 ; character, 33 ; 
lawgiver, builder, ib. ; his Edic- 
tiim, 54 

Theoderic I., West Goth, 16; de- 
feats Attila, 22 

Theoderic II., 26 



ZUL 

Theodosius I., 8 

Theudelinda, Queen of Lombards, 42 

Thing, 180 

'I'olbiac, battle of, 38 

Toiiia. Gothic king. 102 

'I'oulouse, Gothic capital, 17 

I'ours, {v. I'oitiers), Gregory of, 52 ; 

St. Martin, 84 
Turanian. 8, 20; third barbarian 

wave of invasion, 8 
Turks. 20 
7y/>e, formulary, 114 

ULFILA converts Goths, trans- 
lates Bible, 9, 36 
Ungri, V. Hungary 



ALENTINIAN III., 22, 24, 26 



V 



Vandals, cross the Rhine into G:mi, 
14; Spain, 15; driven before 
West Goths, 15; cro.-iS into Africa 
imder Genseric, 17; conquest of 
Africa, character of, 17, 35; naval 
power, 18, 24; sack Rome, 24 

Varangians, 212 

Venice, origin of, 23 

Verdun, treaty of, 1^7, 164, 201 

Vermandois, Counts of, 173 

Verona, 33, 41 

Vistula, 4 

Vladimir, 213, 214 

Youlon, V. Poitiers, 38 

"T17ANDERING of the Na- 

VV lions," 3 
Watling Street, 67 
Wedmore, peace of, 183, 187, 186 
"Welsh." 63, 67,68,77 
IVends^ Slave race, 201, 214 
Wessex, 66, 67 ; centre of pow r 

gradually shifting to, 68, 177, 1S2- 

191 
Willibrord, preaches to the Frisians, 

13=; 
Witan, Witenagemot, 181 

ZENO, Emperor. 29, 100, 114 
Ziilpich, battle of, 38 



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Adelphi Acad., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Earlham Coll., Richmond, Ind. 
Granger Place School, Canandaigua, 

N. Y. 
Salt Lake Acad., Salt LakeCity, Utah. 
Beloit Col., Beloit, Wis. 
Logan Female Coll., Russellville, Ky. 
No. West Univ., Evanston, 111. 
State Normal School, Baltimore, Md. 
Hamilton Coll., Clinton, N. Y. 
Doane Coll., Crete, Neb. 
Princeton College, Princeton, N. J. 
Williams Coll., Williamstown, Mass. 
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, N. Y. 
Illinois Coll., Jacksonville, 111. 



Univ. of South, Sewaunee, Tenn. 
Wesleyan Univ., Mt. Pleasant, la, 
Univ. of Cal., Berkeley, Cal. 
So. Car. Coll., Columbia, S. C. 
Amsterdam Acad., Amsterdam, 

N. Y. 
Carleton Coll., Northfield, Minn. 
Wesleyan Univ., Middletown, Ma.ss. 
Albion Coll., Albion, Mich. 
Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, N. H. 
Wilmington Coll., Wilmington, O. 
Madison Univ., Hamilton, N. Y. 
Syracuse Univ., Syracuse, N. Y. 
Univ. of Wis., Madison, Wis. 
Union Coll., Schenectady, N. Y. 
Norwich Free Acad., Norwich, Conn. 
Greenwich Acad., Greenwich, Conn. 
Univ. of Neb., Lincoln, Neb. 
Kalamazoo Coll., Kalamazoo, Mich. 
Olivet Coll., Olivet, Mich. 
Amherst Coll., Amherst, Mass. 
Ohio State Univ., Columbus, O. 
Free Schools, Oswego, N. Y. 



Bishop J. F. Hurst, ex-President of Drew Theol. Sem. 
"It appears to me that the idea of Morris in his Epochs is 
strictly in harmony with the philosophy of history — namely, that 
great movements should be treated not according to narrow 
geographical and national limits and distinction, but universally, 
according to their place in the general life of the world. The 
historical Maps and the copious Indices are welcome additions 
to the volumes." 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT 
HISTORY. 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 

GREECE AND ROME, AND OF THEIR RELA TIONS TO 

OTHER COUNTRIES AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS. 

Edited by 

Rev. G. W. Cox and Charles Sankey, M.A. 

Eleven volumes, i6mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $11.00. 



TROY— ITS LEGEND, HISTORY, AND 
LITERATURE. By S. G. W. Benjamin. 

"The task of the author has been to gather into a clear 
and very readable narrative all that is known of legendary, 
historical, and geographical Troy, and to tell the story of 
Homer, and weigh and compare the different theories in the 
Homeric controversy. The work is well done. His book is 
altogether candid, and is a very valuable and entertaining 
compendium." — Hartford Courant. 

"As a monograph on Troy, covering all sides of the ques- 
tion, it is of great value, and supplies a long vacant place in 
our fund of classical knowledge." — N. Y. Christian Advocate. 

THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS. By 

Rev G. W. Cox. 

"It covers the ground in a perfectly satisfactory way. 
The work is clear, succinct, and readable." — New York 
Independent. 

" Marked by thorough and comprehensive scholarship and 
by a skillful style." — Congregaiionalist. 

"It would be hard to find a more creditable book. The 
author's prefatory remarks upon the origin and growth of 
Greek civilization are alone worth the price of the volume." 
— Christian Union. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 



THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE— From the Flight 
of Xerxes to the Fall of Athens. By Rev. 
G. W. Cox. 

" Mr. Cox writes in such a way as to bring before the 
reader everything which is important to be known or learned ; 
and his narrative cannot fail to give a good idea of the men 
and deeds with which he is concerned." — The Churchman. 

"Mr. Cox has done his work with the honesty of a true 
student. It shows persevering scholarship and a v^esire to 
get at the truth."— A'^fw York Herald. 

THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMA- 
CIES. By Charles Sankey, M. A. 

*' This volume covers the period between the disasters of 
Athens at the close of the Pelopenesian war and the rise of 
Macedon. It is a very striking and instructive picture of the 
political life of the Grecian commonwealth at that time." — 
The Churchfnan. 

"It is singularly interesting to read, and in respect to 
arrangement, maps, etc., is all that can be desired." — Boston 
Congregationalist. 

THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE— Its Rise and 
Culmination to Death of Alexander the 
Great. By A. M. Curteis, M.A. 

"A good and satisfactory history of a very important period. 
The maps are excellent, and the story is lucidly and vigor- 
ously told." — The Nation. 

" The same compressive style and yet completeness of 
detail that have characterized the previous issues in this 
delightful series, are found in this volume. Certainly the art 
of conciseness in writing was never carried to a higher or 
more effective point." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

^*-f. The above five volutnes give a connected and complete 
history of Greece from the earliest times to the death of 
A lexander. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 

EARLY ROME— From the Foundation of the 
City to its Destruction by the Gauls. By 

W. IHNE, Ph.D. 

" Those who want to know the truth instead of the tra- 
ditions that used to be learned of our fathers, will find in the 
work entertainment, careful scholarship, and sound sense." — 
Cincinnati Times. 

" The book is excellently well done. The views are those 
of a learned and able man, and they are presented in this 
volume with great force and clearness." — The Nation. 

ROME AND CARTHAGE— The Punic Wars. 

By R. BoswoRTH Smith. 

" By blending the account of Rome and Carthage the ac- 
complished author presents a succinct and vivid picture of 
two great cities and people which leaves a deep impression. 
The story is full of intrinsic interest, and was never better 
told. ' ' — Christian Union. 

" The volume is one of rare interest and value." — Chicago 
Interior. 

"An admirably condensed history of Carthage, from its 
establishment by the adventurous Phoenician traders to its 
sad and disastrous fall." — New York Herald. 

THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SULLA. By 

A. H. Beesley. 

" A concise and scholarly historical sketch, descriptive of 
the decay of the Roman Republic, and the events which paved 
the way for the advent of the conquering Caesar. It is an 
excellent account of the leaders and legislation of the repub- 
lic." — Boston Post. 

" It is prepared in succinct but comprehensive style, and is 
an excellent book for reading and reference." — New York 
Observer. 

" No better condensed account of the two Gracchi and the 
turbulent careers of Marius and Sulla has yet appeared." — 
New York Independent. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 

THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By the Very Rev. 
Charles Merivale, D.D. 

** In brevity, clear and scholarly treatment of the subject, 
and the convenience of map, index, and side notes, the 
volume is a model." — New York Tribune. 

"An admirable presentation, and in style vigorous and 
picturesque." — Hartford Courant. 

THE EARLY EMPIRE— From the Assassina- 
tion of Julius Caesar to tiie Assassination 
of Domitian. By Rev. W. Wolfe Capes, M. A. 

" It is written with great clearness and simplicity of style, 
and is as attractive an account as has ever been given in 
brief of one of the most interesting periods of Roman 
History." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

"It is a clear, well-proportioned, and trustworthy perfor- 
mance, and well deserves to be studied." — Christian at 
Work. 

THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES-The Roman 
Empire of the Second Century. By Rev. 
W. Wolfe Capes, M.A. 

" The Roman Empire during the second century is the 
broad subject discussed in this book, and discussed with 
learning and intelligence," — New York Independent. 

" The writer's diction is clear and elegant, and his narra- 
tion is free from any touch of pedantry. In the treatment of 
its prolific and interesting theme, and in its general plan, the 
book is a model of works of its class." — New York Herald. 

" We are glad to commend it. It is written clearly, and 
with care and accuracy. It is also in such neat and compact 
form as to be the more attractive." — Congregationalist. 

*^* The above six volumes give the History of Rome from 
the founding of the City to the death of Marcus Aurelius 
Antoninus. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN 
HISTORY. 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 

ENGLAND AND EUROPE AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS 

SUBSEQUENT TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 

Edited by 

Edward E. Morris. 

Eighteen volumes, i6mo, with 74 Maps, Plans, and Tables, 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $18.00. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES- 
England and Europe in the Ninth Century. 
By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M.A. 

"A remarkably thoughtful and satisfactory discussion of 
the causes and results of the vast changes which came upon 
Europe during the period discussed. The book is adapted to 
be exceedingly serviceable." — Chicago Standard. 

"At once readable and valuable. It is comprehensive and 
yet gives the details of a period most interesting to the student 
of history. " — Herald and Presbyter. 

"It is written with a clearness and vividness of statement 
which make it the pleasantest reading. It represents a great 
deal of patient research, and is careful and scholarly." — 
Boston Journal. 

THE NORMANS IN EUROPE— The Feudal 
System and England under the Norman 
Kings. By Rev. A. H. Johnson, M.A. 

" Its pictures of the Normans in their home, of the Scan- 
dinavian exodus, the conquest of England, and Norman 
administration, are full of vigor and cannot fail of holding the 
reader's attention." — Episcopal Register. 

" The style of the author is vigorous and animated, and he 
has given a valuable sketch of the origin and progress of the 
great Northern movement that has shaped the history of 
modern Europe." — Boston Transcript. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY 

THE CRUSADES. By Rev. G. W. Cox. 

" To be warmly commended for important qualities. The 
author shows conscientious fidelity to the materials, and such 
skill in the use of them, that, as a result, the reader has 
before him a narrative related in a style that makes it truly 
fascinating." — Congregationalist. 

** It is written in a pure and flowing style, and its arrange- 
ment and treatment of subject are exceptional." — Christian 
Intelligencer. 

THE EARLY P L A N T AG EN ETS— Their 
Relation to tine History of Europe; The 
Foundation and Growth of Constitutional 
Government. By Rev. w. Stubbs, m.a. 

" Nothing could be desired more clear, succinct, and well 
arranged. All parts of the book are well done. It may be 
pronounced the best existing brief history of the constitution 
for this, its most important period." — The Nation. 

" Prof. Stubbs has presented leading events with such fair- 
ness and wisdom as are seldom found. He is remarkably 
clear and satisfactory. " — The Churchman. 

EDWARD III. By Rev. W. Warburton, M.A. 

" The author has done his work well, and we commend it 
as containing in small space all essential matter." — New York 
Independent. 

' ' Events and movements are admirably condensed by the 
author, and presented in such attractive form as to entertain 
as well as instruct." — Chicago Interior. 

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK 
—The Conquest and Loss of France. By 

James Gairdner. 

" Prepared in a most careful and thorough manner, and 
ought to be read by every student. " — New York Times. 

" It leaves nothing to be desired as regards compactness, 
accuracy, and excellence of literar}' execution." — Boston 
Jourftal. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY 

THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVO- 
LUTION. By Frederic Seebohm. With Notes, on 
Books in English relating to the Reformation, by Prof. 
George P. Fisher, D.D. 

"For an impartial record of the civil and ecclesiastical 
changes about four hundred years ago, we cannot commend a 
better manual." — Sunday- School Times. 

"All that could be desired, as well in execution as in plan. 
The narrative is animated, and the selection and grouping of 
events skillful and effective." — The Nation. 

THE EARLY TUDORS— Henry VII., Henry 

VIII. By Rev. C. E. Moberley, M.A., late Master in 
Rugby School. 

"Is concise, scholarly, and accurate. On the epoch of which 
it treats, we know of no work which equals it. " — N. V. Observer. 

" A marvel of clear and succinct brevity and good historical 
judgment. There is hardly a better book of its kind to be 
named." — New York Independent. 

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By Rev. M. 
Creighton, M.A. 

"Clear and compact in style ; careful in their facts, and 
just in interpretation of them. It sheds much light on the 
progress of the Reformation and the origin of the Popish 
reaction during Queen Elizabeth's reign ; also, the relation of 
Jesuitism to the latter. " — Presbyterian Review. 

" A clear, concise, and just story of an era crowded with 
events of interest and importance." — New York World. 

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR— 1 61 8-1 648. 

By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 

" As a manual it will prove of the greatest practical value, 
while to the general reader it will afford a clear and interesting 
account of events. We know of no more spirited and attractive 
recital of the great era. " — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

" The thrilling story of those times has never been told so 
vividly or succinctly as in this volume." — Episcopal Register. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN- HISTORY. 

THE PURITAN REVOLUTION; and the First 
Two Stuarts, 1 603- 1 660. By Samuel Rawson 
Gardiner. 

" The narrative is condensed and brief, yet sufficiently com- 
prehensive to give an adequate view of the events related.'* 
— Chicago Standard. 

' ' Mr. Gardiner uses his researches in an admirably clear 
and fair way." — Congr-egaiionalist. 

' ' The sketcn h concise, but clear and perfectly intelligible." 
—Hartford Courant. 

THE ENGLISH RESTORATION AND LOUIS 
XIV., from the Peace of Westphalia to the 
Peace of Nimwegen. By Osmund Airy, M. A. 

" It is crisply and admirably written. An immense amount 
of information is conveyed and with great clearness, the 
arrangement of the subjects showing great skill and a thor- 
ough command of the complicated theme." — Boston Saturday 
Evening Gazette. 

"The author writes with fairness and discrimination, and 
has given a clear and intelligible presentation of the time." — 
New York Evangelist. 

THE FALL OF THE STUARTS; and Western 
Europe. By Rev. Edward Hale, M.A. 

" A valuable compend to the general reader and scholar." 
— Providence Journal. 

"It will be found of great value. It is a very graphic 
account of the history of Europe during the 17th century, 
and is admirably adapted for the use of students." — Boston 
Saturday Evening Gazette. 

' 'An admirable handbook for the student. " — The Churchman. 

THE AGE OF ANNE. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 

" The author's arrangement of the material is remarkably 
clear, his selection and adjustment of the facts judicious, his 
historical judgment fair and candid, while the style wins by 
its simple elegance." — Chicago Standard. 

' * An excellent compendium of the history of an important 
period." — The Watchtnan. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 

THE EARLY HANOVERIANS— Europe from 
the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Aix- 
la-Chapelle. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 

** Masterly, condensed, and vigorous, this is one of the 
books which it is a delight to read at odd moments ; which 
are broad and suggestive, and at the same time condensed in 
treatment. " — Christian Advocate. 

" A remarkably clear and readable summary of the salient 
points of interest. The maps and tables, no less than the 
author's style and treatment of the subject, entitle the volume 
to the highest claims of recognition." — Boston Daily Ad- 
vertiser. 

FREDERICK THE GREAT, AND THE SEVEN 
YEARS' WAR. By F. W. Longman. 

"The subject is most important, and the author has treated 
it in a way which is both scholarly and entertaining." — The 
Churchman. 

"Admirably adapted to interest school boys, and older 
heads will find it pleasant reading." — New York Tribune. 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, AND FIRST 
EMPIRE. By William O'Connor Morris. With 
Appendix by Andrew D. White, LL.D., ex-President of 
Cornell University. 

" We have long needed a simple compendium of this period, 
and we have here one which is brief enough to be easily run 
through with, and yet particular enough to make entertaining 
reading." — New York Evening Post. 

" The author has well accomplished his difficult task of 
sketching in miniature the grand and crowded drama of the 
French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, showing 
himself to be no servile compiler, but capable of judicious 
and independent criticism." — Springfield Republicati. 

THE EPOCH OF REFORM— 1 830-1 850. By 

Justin McCarthy. 

"Mr. McCarthy knows the period of which he writes 
thoroughly, and the result is a narrative that is at once enter- 
taining and trustworthy." — New York Examiner. 

" The narrative is clear and comprehensive, and told with 
abundant knowledge and grasp of the subject." — Boston 
Courier. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL 
WORKS. 

THE DAWN OF HISTORY. An Introduction 
to Pre-Historic Study. New and Enlarged Edition. 
Edited by C. F. Keary. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

This work treats successively of the earliest traces of man ; 
of language, its growth, and the story it tells of the pre-his- 
toricusersof it ; of early social life, the religions, mythologies, 
and folk-tales, and of the history of writing. The present 
edition contains about one hundred pages of new matter, 
embodying the results of the latest researches. 

"A fascinating manual. In its way, the work is a model 
of what a popular scientific work should be. " — Boston Sat. 
Eve. Gazette. 

THE ORIGIN OF NATIONS. By Professor George 
Rawlinson, M.A. i2mo, with maps, $1.00. 

The first part of this book discusses the antiquity of civiliza- 
tion in Egypt and the other early nations of the East. The 
second part is an examination of the ethnology of Genesis, 
showing its accordance with the latest results of modem 
ethnographical science. 

* * A work of genuine scholarly excellence, and a useful 
offset to a great deal of the superficial current literature on 
such subjects. " — Congregationalist . 

MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY. For the Use 
of Schools, Art Students, and General 
Readers. Founded on the Works of Pet- 
iscus, Preller, and Welcker. By Alexander 
S. Murray, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 
British Museum. With 45 Plates. Reprinted from the 
Second Revised London Edition. Crown 8vo, $1.75. 

" It has been acknowledged the best work on the subject 
to be found in a concise form, and as it embodies the results 
of the latest researches and discoveries in ancient mythologies, 
it is superior for school and general purposes as a handbook 
to any of the so-called standard works." — Cleveland Herald. 

' * Whether as a manual for reference, a text-book for school 
use, or for the general reader, the book will be found very 
valuable and interesting." — Boston Journal. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. 

THE HISTORY OF ROME, from the Earliest 
Time to ttie Period of Its Decline. By Dr. 

Theodor Mommsen. Translated by W. P. Dickson, D.D., 
LL. D. Reprinted from the Revised London Edition. Four 
volumes, crown 8vo. Price per set, $8.00. 

"A work of the very highest merit; its learning is exact 
and profound ; its narrative full of genius and skill ; its 
descriptions of men are admirably vivid." — London Times. 

"Since the days of Niebuhr, no work on Roman History 
has appeared that combines so much to attract, instruct, and 
charm the reader. Its style — a rare quality in a German 
author — is vigorous, spirited, and animated." — Dr. Schmitz. 

THE PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
From Caesar to Diocletian. By Theodor 
Mommsen. Translated by William P. Dickson, D.D., 
LL.D. With maps. Two vols., 8vo, $6.00, 

" The author draws the wonderfully rich and varied picture 
of the conquest and administration of that great circle of 
peoples and lands which formed the empire of Rome outside 
of Italy, their agriculture, trade, and manufactures, their 
artistic and scientific life, through all degrees of civilization, 
with such detail and completeness as could have come from 
no other hand than that of this great master of historical re- 
search." — Prof. W. A. Packard, Princeton College. 

THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 

Abridged from the History by Professor Theodor Mommsen, 
by C. Bryans and F. J. R. Hendy. i2mo, $1.75. 

" It is a genuine boon that the essential parts of Mommsen's 
Rome are thus brought within the easy reach of all, and the 
abridgment seems to me to preserve unusually well the glow 
and movement of the original." — Prof. Tracy Peck, Yale 
University. 

"The condensation has been accurately and judiciously 
effected. I heartily commend the volume as the most adequate 
embodiment, in a single volume, of the main results of modern 
historical research in the field of Roman affairs." — Prof. 
Henry M. Baird, University of City of New York. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. 

THE HISTORY OF GREECE. By Prof. Dr. 
Ernst Curtius. Translated by Adolphus William Ward, 
M.A., Fellow of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, Prof, of 
History in Owen's College, Manchester. Five volumes, 
crown 8vo. Price per set, $10.00. 

" We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius' book bet- 
ter than by saying that it may be fitly ranked with Theodor 
Mommsen's great work. " — London Spectator. 

"As an introduction to the study of Grecian history, no 
previous work is comparable to the present for vivacity and 
picturesque beauty, while in sound learning and accuracy of 
statement it is not inferior to the elaborate productions which 
enrich the literature of the age." — N. Y. Daily I'ribune. 

C/ESAR: a Sketch. By James Anthony Froude, 

M.A. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

"This book is a most fascinating biography and is by far 
the best account of Julius Csesar to be found in the English 
language." — The London Sta7idard. 

"He combines into a compact and nervous narrative all 
that is known of the persona), social, political, and military 
life of Csesar ; and with his sketch of Caesar includes other 
brilliant sketches of the great man, his friends, or rivals, 
who contemporaneously with him formed the principal figures 
in the Roman world." — Harper's Monthly. 

CICERO. Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero. By 

William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C. 20 Engravings. New 
Edition. 2 vols., crown 8vo, in one, gilt top, $2.50. 

The author has not only given us the most complete and 
well-balanced account of the life of Cicero ever published ; 
he has drawn an accurate and graphic picture of domestic life 
among the best classes of the Romans, one which the reader 
of general literature, as well as the student, may peruse with 
pleasure and profit. 

"A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, 
Mr. Forsyth seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the 
precise attitude which it behooves a biographer to take when 
narrating the life, the personal life of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth 
produces what we venture to say will become one of the 
classics of English biographical literature, and will be wel- 
comed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions 
and of no profession at aU. " — London Quarterly. 



VALUABLE WORKS ON 
CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 

THE HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE. 
From the Earliest Period to the Death of 

Marcus Aurelius. With Chronological Tables, etc., 
for the use of Students. By C. T. Cruttwell, M.A. Crown 
8vo, $2.50. 

Mr. Cruttwell's book is written throughout from a purely 
literary point of view, and the aim has been to avoid tedious 
and trivial details. The result is a volume not only suited 
for the student, but remarkably readable for all who possess 
any interest in the subject. 

" Mr. Cruttwell has given us a genuine history of Roman 
literature, not merely a descriptive list of authors and their 
productions, but a well elaborated portrayal of the successive 
stages in the intellectual development of the Romans and the 
various forms of expression which these took in literature." — 
A^. V. Nation. 

UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE. 

A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. 
From the Earliest Period of Demosthenes. 

By Frank Byron Jevons, M.A., Tutor in the University 
of Durham. Crown 8vo, $2.50. 

The author goes into detail with sufficient fullness to make 
the history complete, but he never loses sight of the com- 
manding lines along which the Greek mind moved, and a 
clear understanding of which is necessary to every intelligent 
student of universal literature. 

"It is beyond all question the best history of Greek litera- 
ture that has hitherto been published." — London Spectator. 

' ' With such a book as this within reach there is no reason 
why any intelligent English reader may not get a thorough 
and comprehensive insight into the spirit of Greek literature, 
of its historic development, and of its successive and chief 
masterpieces, which are here so finely characterized, analyzed, 
and criticised." — C/iica^o Advance. 



TRANSLATIONS OF PLATO. 

THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO. Translated 
into English, with Analysis and Introduc- 
tions. By B. JowETT, M.A., Master of Balliol College, 
Oxford. A new and cheaper edition. Fourvols., crown 8vo, 
per set, $8.00. 

" The present work of Professor Jowett will be welcomed 
with profound interest, as the only adequate endeavor to 
transport the most precious monument of Grecian thought 
among the familiar treasures of English literature. The 
noble reputation of Professor Jowett, both as a thinker and a 
scholar, is a valid guaranty for the excellence of his perfor- 
mance." — New York Tribune. 

SOCRATES. A Translation of the Apology, 
Crito, and parts of the Phaedo of Plato. 

Containing the Defence of Socrates at his Trial, his Conver- 
sation in Prison, with his Thoughts on the Future Life, and 
an Account of his Death. With an Introduction by Professor 
W. W. Goodwin, of Harvard College. i2mo, cloth, $1.00; 
paper, 50 cents. 

TALKS WITH SOCRATES ABOUT LIFE. 
Translations from the Gorgias and the 

Republic of Plato. i2mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 
cents. 

A DAY IN ATHENS WITH SOCRATES. 
Translations from the Protagoras and the 

Republic of Plato. Being conversations between 
Socrates and other Greeks on Virtue and Justice. i2mo, 
cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. 

*' Eminent scholars, men of much Latin and more Greek, 
attest the skill and truth v,dth which the versions are made ; 
we can confidently speak of their English grace and clearness. 
They seem a ' model of style,' because they are without 
manner and perfectly simple." — W, D. Howells, 

*' We do not remember any translation of a Greek author 
which is a better specimen of idiomatic English than this, or 
a more faithful rendering of the real spirit of the original 
into English as good and as simple as the Greek." — N'ew York 
Evening Post. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 



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